


Spent

by LitsyKalyptica



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Blogging, Bullying, College, Diaspora, F/M, Fíli POV, Fíli and Kíli Brotherly Love, Gen, High School, M/M, Multi, Older Man/Younger Man, POV First Person, Poverty, Professor Baggins, Protective Fíli, Trans Male Character, Transphobia, Uncle Thorin, YouTube
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-19
Updated: 2016-01-31
Packaged: 2018-03-18 16:13:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 25,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3575703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LitsyKalyptica/pseuds/LitsyKalyptica
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Erebor Complex Building consists of tiny tenements for struggling immigrants. Working an immersive study, Prof. Bilbo Baggins moves in down the hall from a family he quickly grows too close to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [div2994](https://archiveofourown.org/users/div2994/gifts).



FILI

Opening up the windows did little to nothing to cool down our tiny apartment. There was no escaping the suffocating heavy heat in the air; nothing to do but lie entirely still on the sofa, but not so long that you stick to the old vinyl like Velcro, because the ice cream truck might one day come down the street and stop in front of the complex instead of speeding past like children aren’t melting in the sun –you had to be ready.

I cut my hair in June, when it started to dampen in the sweat on my back. The cheap hairdresser had trimmed it too short to look very good on my square head, chopping away while I’d fallen asleep in the chair, leaving nothing but tiny spikes of blond hairs. “I’ll cut it myself next time,” I’d promised Ma then, because I shouldn’t have been spending my hard-earned cash on someone who would mess up the first real cut I’d gotten in years. It grew back unnaturally quickly, thank goodness, to a sort of shaggy mess that wouldn’t do what I wanted in the humidity –I missed my braids; but it was better than nothing.

Kee was more enduring than I was: his hair survived the whole summer an inch below his shoulders, thick and heavy, and nothing to be done with it but tie half of it back. He’d just showered and was asleep on the couch beside me, still damp, calves trapping my thick thighs to the uncomfortable cushion and I’d push him right off if he wasn’t about to be exhausted by work and wasn’t worth disturbing. I picked up my notebook and tried to make notes for a sketch relating to this heat –but damn the humidity was sweating my brain out my ears. I dropped the pencil in a warm huff, rubbed at my eyes, and stared out the window. It wasn’t sunny –god knows sunlight would boil the wet air!— but even the dark clouds bore no hope for a cooling rain.

“We might get a storm,” I groaned, accidentally waking my brother next to me. I winced but smile a little to have my only company conscious. “Sorry, Kee.”

“’S fine,” he yawned, as if nothing had been disturbed. He winced as the heaviness lingered in his limbs. He didn’t bother to sit up, but spared me the dead weight of his legs, whining all the while. “What time is it?”

I checked my phone; it was almost dead but held on to show me the hour. “Four-eighteen,” I sighed, tucking it back into the pocket of my shorts. He groaned loudly and rolled over, off the sofa, face-palming the dingy rug. I laughed a little and nudged his head with my foot. “Wake up, you got work. Thranduil will have your ass if you’re late –you can’t keep blaming the bus schedule.” He worked as a cleaner at the luxurious Woods apartment uptown, and hated going three out of five days a week. “It’s just three hours and then you’re done. You already showered, get up!”

Kee fumbled to his knees like a baby giraffe and got to a swaying standing position. He rubbed at his forehead and gratefully found there wasn’t a bump to blemish his carefully toasted face. “Anything in the fridge?” He’d showered and slept before he could eat, and now there was no time.

“I don’t know. Maybe some milk, a hot dog –leftover boiled chicken. I don’t know; you don’t have time for this. Pick something up from a cart.” I stood and went to hurry him out the door in his t-shirt and shorts. The hallway outside our corner apartment was no cooler and I almost couldn’t bear to let any possible coolness leak through the open door, but Kee was slipping a pair of too-big worn-through sneakers on. I stood shamelessly in my underwear, confident that no one was around to see me, blocking the way back in so he might not stall himself longer. I softened a little just before he left –“Be sure to get something to eat, on me.” I stuffed a crumpled five into his wet palm. Even if he stopped for a minute or two on the way, he was a runner, and wouldn’t miss his bus.

Kee nodded shortly and went for a little parting hug, but thought better of it. He patted my shoulder instead and ran to food and detested work.

I was about to head back in when I heard a loud crash at the other end of the hall. I groaned quietly to myself and shouted out to ask if everything was okay. I’d much rather go do nothing than stand here in the sluggish warmth –but altruism, as Ma said, had never sizzled out in my conscience, and I couldn’t resist. I took a step, and then another, watching where I thought the noise had come from. The hallway made a sharp turn, but by the time I made it to the inner subsection of the fourth floor, I saw what had happened.

The man was small and doe-eyed, copper-haired and surrounded by bags that had fallen apart. I winced and watched him try to gather himself and his basic belongings scattered along the dusty carpet. He seemed a rather neurotic type, and when I called out to him again, he jumped to attention.

“Hello!” he greeted me with a pasted grin, and stuck out his hand like he did on a regular basis. I stared at it for a fraction of a second before cautiously clasping the outstretched palm and appeased him. He looked rather flustered still and stared at my face so intently I worried I might have drooled in my summer sedation. “I’m, uh—” He pardoned himself a moment to wipe at his nose with a handkerchief. “I’m sorry –allergies. My name’s Bilbo Baggins, I’m just moving in today.”

“Oh.” And again, my urge to help betrayed me with a small smile quirking at the corner of my lips. “Do you need any help?”

He stared some more for an awkward moment, still looking either into my eyes or right at the bridge of my nose. For a second I wanted to shield myself, but I looked down to see I was still in my boxer shorts, and the redness in the man’s face –Mr. Baggins’s rosy face— seemed to transfer there to my own. I stuttered an apology but he laughed and assured me that, if I got some clothes on, he would very much appreciate the help.


	2. Chapter 2

I got into a pair of shorts and a tank so I was no longer so sparsely dressed and scaring off our new neighbor. It was odd to me, honestly –my mind was divided between this and whether or not I should wear my sneakers— that Mr. Baggins was moving into any apartment in the EC. He seemed born in the country, spoke the English well enough. Maybe he had fallen so down on his luck that money was tight enough to downgrade here, or maybe I was making assumptions, maybe he’d studied so hard that he’d adopted the accent as well. (I decided to slip my sneakers on, no socks, and jogged back down the hall.)

Bilbo had gotten his few bags and boxes into the studio apartment, a clump in the living space floor. I looked around –the place was already furnished with bare bones essentials: a few appliances in the kitchenette, a bed frame and small open closet. He had no furniture with him, not even a mattress. “What are you gonna sleep on?” I asked, drifting toward the things and weeding out what I could put away for him.

He gestured me to stand back with a smile and small wave of his hand, squatting to rummage through his few belongings. “A friend of mine is supposed to bring an old mattress later tonight. If he doesn’t…” He shrugged one shoulder. “I’ll lay my blanket out and camp on the floor.” (as if the thought of sleeping on cheap linoleum floor didn’t faze him a bit.)

“I…” The thought was odd to me –even though, in our own space, “We only have one bed; my Ma sleeps on a cot and my Uncle on the couch, but I don’t remember anyone having to sleep on the floor.”

Mr. Baggins seemed as taken aback by my exposition as I was, but shot me another good-natured smile. “It will only be for one night.” He made no judgmental comment on our family’s living situation; maybe he figured he was in the same boat, and had nothing degrading to say. It was refreshing coming from someone rather outside our little community.

“Were you born here—?” He trailed off, expecting my name, and I supplied it awkwardly. “Fili. Were you born here?”

“Yeah.” It wasn’t exactly an odd question. To someone born and raised in-country my slightly staccato accent might pique curiosity. But yes, I was born here in the city. “I’ve lived down the hall my whole life.”

“You and your family?” He was hanging up some collared shirts (three of them) in the little closet. I nodded before I realized he couldn’t see me, and said it out loud. “Were you all born here?”

“No— I’m first generation, my Ma and Uncle were born in Erebor. Most of us in the building were –that’s what it’s named for. Except the young ones. All the children were born since the crossing.” I had the responsibility that came with being the first born in this new country, and needed to excel and set an example for the children. Kee was second, and felt the freedom of it regularly. I started to tell Bilbo as much, but cut it short after speaking about myself –if Mr. Baggins were to meet Kee (and he soon would), I wouldn’t want him going in with some secondhand impression, no matter how well I knew my brother. Mr. Baggins seemed unusually interested, and his kindness settled something unnerving in my gut; and for his sake, I had to say it. “You’re not from Erebor, are you?”

“I can’t say I am. I’m just a country boy from the north –never moved around much between there and here.” He stacks his pants on a shelf above the rack. “But thank you for asking.”

I couldn’t tiptoe around the matter. “Some of your new neighbors might be… wary of you, Mr. Baggins.”

“Oh please, call me Bilbo. And why would that be?” His voice showed no concern when it bounced in and out of the storage space and back to me, and there was a little lilt of a smiling calmness.

I bit the inside of my cheek; I hated introducing our people to strangers who might get the wrong idea. “This is just a very,” I thought hard, “closed community. Closed off, I mean –we’re very sheltered –a lot of us don’t speak English, or don’t speak it well enough to carry any substantial conversation.”

“I’ve got thick skin,” he lied. “I’ll manage.” But when he finally turned to me, lo and behold, the predicted smile was indeed spread back into his round cheeks. “I’m a professor, Fili –I teach sociology and a foreign literature class at MEU. And I can tell already in the little conversation we’ve had that you’re a very bright young man.” I swallowed the praise and let it bloom in my chest. “Do you write?”

“A bit,” I admitted, shuffling, wondering why the previous subject was apparently abandoned completely. “I have a YouTube channel with my friends –I write sketches for them to act out. Mostly some fluffy comedy bits that I hope are at least a little funny.” I laughed at my own incompetence, but in reality, my stuff was mostly of little substance, even if they might get a chuckle out of a few dozen-thousand subscribers.

“I’m glad to hear your intelligence is being put to good creative work.” His smiled brightened to a humming glow and he closed the closet door, the few bits of clothing he packed away inside apparently all he had with him. “What else do you like to do?” He spoke slowly, leisurely, almost made lazy and probably by the heat that in our exchange I’d almost forgotten –almost.

“I go to school; I work.” Between those two I was lucky to have videos to spend the some time on, but not much else.

“What do you study at school; what do you do for work?” And when I stammered on an answer he pulled back, cheeks flushed. “I’m sorry, I’m asking too many questions and not giving enough answers, aren’t I?”

“No, no –you’re fine. I work at the library, putting books back on the shelves and stuff. It’s not great but the pay’s fine.” I flicked a peeling bit of paint on the wall and quickly retreated my fidgeting fingers when I realized. “And I go to the community college, earning my basic requirements –honestly, I don’t know what I wanna do or even what field I wanna go into.”

“You’ll figure it out. You’re young yet, you have years ahead of you to figure out what you want to do with your life!” And he said it with such confidence in an almost stranger that a part of me believed it without question. “I think I’m alright on getting everything unpacked –but if you’re not busy, I would enjoy your company.”

I smiled a little and nodded, and moved to half-sit against the crumbling window pane. My back pressed and stuck against the glass through my thin shirt, but we quickly got lost in giving away the careless details of our present lives that the uncomfortable ache evaporated there and everywhere.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments catalyze updates :)


	3. Chapter 3

We talked a long while, pleasant conversation smoothly interrupted every few topics by my offer to help him put something away (where he couldn’t reach, or if something looked heavy) and was always met with a smiling dismissal and “I’ve got it, thank you.” I tried to learn a lot about Mr. Baggins –Bilbo— while we were in that back-and-forth, but though he seemed willing to share information about his professional career, his accolades in his field, and even appeased my curiosity with a few vague details of his childhood, he still seemed very closed off. I didn’t mind; aside from my brother I knew very little about even my closest companions: they were either closed off or I wasn’t open to trusting myself with their personal business. Bilbo and I had just met, and though we chatted like old friends by nighttime, it didn’t bother me that we were still scraping the surface.

It was at eighty-thirty-ish that he received a call from the friend that was supposed to bring the mattress but something had come up and couldn’t. Bilbo thanked them and hung up with a little disappointed sigh. I winced; I had not liked the idea of the man having to sleep on the floor earlier, and it was only more upsetting now that we were growing friendly. I felt helpless; I had nothing to offer but an apology on the friend’s behalf. He smiled at me again and asked I didn’t let it worry me the way I was failing to hide. “I’ll be perfectly comfortable.”

It was a bittersweet coincidence, then, when at almost nine I received a call from a payphone –Ma saying she would not be home tonight; that her custodial work had kept her late after the first-year orientation and the place was a mess for her and two others to clean while they all slept satisfied. We conversed briefly in Khuzdul –to an ounce of embarrassment on my part in front of the English-bred professor— and it was made clear that she was staying overnight with a sweet young colleague of hers, and she’d be home late the next night, well after Kee and I had gone to sleep. She asked me to heat up leftovers from Sunday (this was Thursday) because Kee would come home hungry, and that I say goodnight to him and bid the same to me before hanging up in a regretful hurry.

I didn’t like how she was kept so late, and that she would get an hour or so of sleep before going to the cafeteria to serve lunch to these same ungrateful university twits. But her absence opened a little vacancy in our apartment for Bilbo to stay just one night.

I called her back, and she seemed exasperated and exhausted so I kept it short. I asked if a friend could stay over –suddenly glad Bilbo wouldn’t understand, and I could give each of them a different message— and she rushed off with a hasty “yes” before she was made to hang up again. I grinned and spun on my heel, back to the man waiting so patiently for my attention.

“Who was that?” he asked.

“My Ma. She’s not coming home tonight, and I told her about the bed situation here; she said you can come to our place, sleep on her cot.”

Bilbo looked comically scandalized by the suggestion, but I didn’t laugh so he could take the offer seriously. “Really, Fili, I’m fine—” But I grabbed him, not hard, by the arm, and he let out a little squeak as I tugged him to the door. “I don’t want to impose!”

“It’s not imposition if it’s being offered!” I did understand how he felt, and sympathized, but I’d rather help him get used to the idea of staying the night with his new neighbors than help him set a makeshift bed on the floor.

* * *

 

He sat stiffly on the cot outside what we plainly referred to as “The Bedroom” (though not in English). Kee and I shared the lumpy double bed with the bad springs that gave us sore backs by our early teens, and everything else in the room, what little there was, was shared among the four of us. The small closet was cramped with four thin wardrobes; the chest with the mirror, somehow intact many years and two rowdy boys later, awkwardly leaning between the lid and the wall, was for anybody’s use in the morning routine; the chest itself, to get into which meant removing the mirror, held every odd thing that had accumulated over the years. Everything, even to us, felt antique. The only thing new thing to be found in the Bedroom was the doorknob, changed to give it a proper lock last year at Christmas –but it was for necessary privacy only, because some things required too much space for comfort that our three-foot wide bathroom didn’t allow for.

But Bilbo, in his kindness and middle-aged wisdom, made me at least excited to introduce him around. I knew other Khazash would be suspicious of him first, like their comfortable circle was being ruptured by his presence in the building, but once they warmed up (and I was confident they would!) they would welcome him as an honorary member of our collective family.

Kee was the first of the two members of my immediate blood family that would arrive home that night. He stumbled, hungry and exhausted, in through the front door that swung back and hit the wall behind it. The loud thud brought me to my senses and my feet when I realized I’d forgotten to heat up Sunday’s dinner.

“Food?” he groaned, childlishly grumpy until he had some in his stomach. He trod into the kitchen to find nothing made, but I met him there with half a dozen apologies interspersed with assurances that it would be ready soon. I got the pan out from under the sink and washed away the mouse pellets. Kee climbed (gracelessly in his fatigue) onto the short countertop between the basin of dishes and the stove on which I started reheating the chicken and mashed potatoes. He watched me, nose scrunched up, as I poured a cap of oil into the pan and dropped in a leg of boiled meat and cold lumpy potatoes. I stirred them in with each other with a spatula –I was no chef— and dumped them onto his plate when I thought I’d struck the right balance in time between his impatience and however long the food would take to heat up. The food was still cold on the insides, but he was much less bitter once he’d had a bite to eat.

“You didn’t eat on the way, did you?” I asked plainly, thumbing a dent Uncle had put in the wall when I was seven. It was small at a glance, but deeper than a glance could catch. “I told you to pick up a hot dog or something on your way to the bus.”

“I can’t keep blaming the bus for being late. Thranduil will have my ass.” There was no mocking punch to it; the same thing I’d said earlier lost its punch around a forkful of potatoes, but his honesty and tired face made me not want the five back.

Kee ate and immediately headed into the Bedroom. Bilbo had gone completely unnoticed, apparently faded into the background, and I couldn't let that go on. When Kee came back out I grabbed his arm and maneuvered him so he couldn't pass over our guest again. "Kee –this is Bilbo, Bilbo Baggins. He just moved down the hall." And my brother went to say something that I swore would be and observation that Bilbo was, very obviously, not Khazash. I cut off his crass greeting by flipping the introduction around. "Bilbo, this is my little brother, Kili."

Bilbo held out his hand to shake, and Kee very quickly crossed his arms over his chest. I was about to call him out for being so rude to someone who'd done him no harm. I tried to push his arms down, urge him to shake the outstretched hand –but the bright flush on his cheeks and the frantic look in his eyes brought my attention to the real problem. Kee had already gone and removed his binder, and now stood feeling too exposed through his shirt, waiting for the other shoe to drop, when Bilbo would notice and react however he would.


	4. Chapter 4

In that three-second interval, I was tense and ready to strike –Bilbo was nice and all but I owed him no defense, one wrong move and I’d throw him right out, let him sleep on that damn floor where I’d be lucky to never see him again.

But it didn’t come to that. Bilbo pulled his hand back and offered a ‘hello’ and friendly smile in its place. “Very nice to meet you, Kili.” He apparently wasn’t any less awkward than when we first met (Kee wasn’t caught standing in his underwear but it was no less embarrassing for him) stumbling in his tiptoeing around the situation that had Kee’s shoulders tight and jaw set. “How was your day?”

“I went to school, went to work, came home. Now I’m going to bed.” His voice was stiff and stilted and I could tell how badly he wanted to get out of there, but we had a guest over and should really try to make him feel welcome. I was trying but I couldn’t handle it all myself. “Goodnight.” It was said quickly and to me only, and he started to tug himself from the grip on his shoulders.

“Kee...” It was a half-hearted plea; maybe it would be best if he did go to bed. He pulled away and I managed to pat his back before he was out of reach. The door was yanked open and slammed shut, and Bilbo and I were left alone again.

“Did I do something wrong?” Bilbo asked quietly, shifting from foot to foot. I shook my head and assured him that Kee was still just tired from a long day, and even though Bilbo’s greeting had been just fine, he wasn’t used to strangers in our apartment. The man nodded, loose copper curls flopping a bit. “I’ll be more careful next time, and come at a better hour.” He smiled, and I laughed a little.

We talked comfortably on the lumpy sofa a while longer; I watched the clock, anxiously anticipating Uncle coming home to find the professor staying the night on Ma’s cot. I couldn’t guess he’d been thrilled with the news (Uncle was hardly thrilled about anything ever) but he’d probably grunt and tell me to move off the sofa with my new friend so that he could get some sleep; he had work early again the next morning, and neither Friday nor the weekend would be very kind to him.

It was almost eleven when I started to get tired, but I forced myself to stay awake so Bilbo wouldn’t have to inevitably face Thorin on his own. But the man next to me seemed to notice my eyelids falling shut against my will, and he chuckled again. “Get some sleep,” he insisted, patting my shoulder. My face burned and I shook my head. “Why not?”

“My uncle will be home soon, and he doesn’t like unexpected visitors. Like… think Kee was bad? Uncle Thorin is much worse.” I shook my head a little fondly and rubbed my shoulder where Bilbo’s hand had been. It felt especially warm and the color in my cheeks didn’t fade.

“I’m sure I can handle him. I’m not just book-smart, you know; I can deal with people as well as anyone can.”

“You don’t know Thorin.”

“I’d like to, though, and if you’re getting sleepy already than I shouldn’t keep you up longer. Go on, now –off to bed.”

I sighed and smiled at him, standing up and heading off. I brushed my teeth in the moldy sink and used the toilet that needed scrubbing when we could get a hold of the proper bleach. I thought about taking a quick (cold, very cold) shower but shuddered at the thought; I was sweaty and stuck to the inside of my clothes and dollar-store deodorant could only do so much in an uncommonly sweltering early September. Kee had showered before work (we were out of soap) and I didn’t wanna be the one to stink up the sheets when we couldn’t get them to a laundromat until Sunday –but without soap or anything was there I point in showering? Probably not; I’d still sweat like the devil in that humid room.

We couldn’t keep the window open because the bug screen was long gone. The room was dark and damp and Kee looked like he was already asleep but it would be hours before either of us could sleep in the suffocating warmth; his uneven breathing gave him away when I laid down next to him. “Kee?” I mumbled, and got no response. His back was turned to me and I was turned to the ceiling, but my head lolled sideways to see the back of his ruddy neck. “Kee.”

“What?” he groaned, clearly exhausted but like I’d thought, not asleep.

“I’m going to the Salv tomorrow to pick up some clothes; do you wanna come?”

He tensed up but his old clothes were getting small on him. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

I was much less tired lying down in the dark, but not enough to go back out and wait longer with Bilbo: I’d go through the same cycle over again. Instead I just listened carefully through the thin walls for Uncle to arrive home. I checked the time every couple of minutes –the clock moving slower and slower every time I glanced at it— and it was almost midnight when the door opened and heavy dragging footsteps could be heard coming inside.

The next thing I heard was Bilbo’s too cheerful voice. “Good evening!” (Uncle, on that note, never understood why it was always “good evening” and not “good night” when it was so dark and late; he still used the latter and often got odd looks for it.) “My name is Bilbo Baggins; I just moved in down the hall, in 4H.” It was, honestly, a bad way to introduce himself. I had told Bilbo that Khazash might not take well to him living among them, didn’t I?

There was an audible grunt in response and I tried to beg Uncle telepathically to just try to be nice, but my mind powers never seemed to work. Kee was asleep by this point and missed out on the exchange through the walls. “Why are you here?”

There was a pause and I could imagine Bilbo’s flustered expression. Uncle was a very intimidating man, especially to strangers; I knew Bilbo wouldn’t be able to handle him himself! Why had I left him? “I’m on leave from MEU for the semester. I’m working on a study and have relocated to be… closer to my work.”

“No –why are you in my house?” (He’d also always call it a “house” even though it barely qualified as a “room.”)

“I… My bedding arrangement fell through, and Fili told me his mother wasn’t coming home tonight, so I could… sleep… here…”

My heart was up in my throat and I wanted to hurl. Nothing good could come from that, I was sure of it! Uncle would lash out, maybe even hurt poor little Bilbo, poor little means-no-harm Bilbo! My breath caught in my throat and I waited for a crash or a thud.

But none came. There was another grunt from Uncle Thorin but that was it, and then the airy compression of the sofa cushions when he collapsed to fall asleep. It was another long moment before I heard the squeaking cot as Bilbo laid down to do the same –and it was then that I could let out the air that had almost strangled me. Finally, I could sleep.


	5. Chapter 5

There were two questions I could always expect by the end of the first week of classes. This semester it had taken longer –probably because I was sitting in the back of every room— but even two weeks in I only found myself bored in waiting for the inevitable. This semester it was when I was approached by a girl about my age with sunburnt skin and dark blonde hair tied up in a messy bun. She was a little shorter than me (I was sitting still; she was standing stiffly next to my desk) and a bit stockier than a lot of the skinnier and leggier blondes to be found in the basic tuition classes, and probably looked better in those jean shorts but I wasn’t awake enough to be interested. She tucked a strand behind her and got straight to the matter: “Do you dye your hair?”

I used to just say yes, because in high school it was by the greater population plagued with ignorance that I got this question with half of my first encounters –nobody could grasp that someone’s natural hair color could be even a shade lighter than their skin. I stopped lying about it even though to lie and say yeah, I dyed my hair was so much easier than having to explain the basics of genetics. (I was, almost incredibly, the only yellow-haired head in the ECB; my father had been just as blond, according to Ma.)

The natural follow-up to an unwavering answer of “no” was always “Where are you from?” And with a roll of my eyes and a (superior, sorry) smirk, I’d say I’m from right here in the city, and move on to my next glass or to go home or wherever I was off to.

But the girl didn’t ask. Instead she nodded and smiled and said “I like it. It suits you,” and nothing else. Bag slung over her shoulder and heavy notebook tucked into her bent elbow, she climbed the stairs out of the lecture hall and disappeared behind the creaking door. I watched her go –I didn’t know her name –not yet.

I got on the bus a block from the school with intentions to meet on the same route with Kee three blocks from his school. I dropped my exact change into the round slot and smoothed the twenty-dollar bill back into place. It was just enough to get some clothes from the Salv and maybe a bite to eat on the way home, and I just hoped it wouldn’t slip through the hole in the one good pocket. I didn’t own a wallet; I thought maybe I could skip the value meal dinner to get a cheap wallet instead –but I was really hungry.

I sat up front behind the surly driver, and when he pulled back into the busy street, I decided to make a pest of myself and strike up some conversation. “My cousin drives a city bus like this.” I picked absently at the seat. (Everyone in the complex was either a concrete American relation –Ma, Uncle, Little Brother— or a cousin.) “His name’s Bombur: big guy, red hair –you know him?” I got a sort of snarl in response and laughed to myself, sitting back against the sticky cushioned bench, digging deeper into the holes and scraping out bits of foam.

I saw Kee from a quarter mile from the bus stop. He had to cross the street still, and a taxi honked at him as he scurried across before the bus pulled away. He was sporting a yellow bruise on the side of his neck that I would drill him about later (if I said anything in public like I burned to Kee would have my ass on a platter for making a scene.) But I was watching him as he hopped up the bus steps; he didn’t have enough change on him but pretended it was more than he really gave, and plopped down next to me. I kept my eyes on his neck and he covered it almost shyly with his hand, glaring daggers at me until I finally looked back ahead. We said nothing.

I told Kee he didn’t have to come inside with me. I stood halfway in the door to the thrift store and he was a few feet back, arms crossed against his chest, as if he could take another step forward and find an electrified force field to shock him back to the proper distance. There was a Burger King down the street: “Wanna go get some food and I’ll be quick in here?”

But he shook his head. “I need some new shirts.” All his t-shirts were black and full of holes, comfortable but not presentable outside the apartment. I nodded slowly and opened the glass door wider, gesturing him inside and patting his shoulder as he slid past me.

The Salv was not much cooler than our stuffy home but it was more brightly lit. Racks of clothes stretched across one side with vague qualifying placards taped to the rail. On the other side was outerwear and books and hand-me-down accessories, and in the basement they had the furniture that would probably fill my first apartment –all secondhand and well-worn but enough for what you paid.

Kee had a crooked basket hanging from his arm, large enough to hold what little we could afford. His ten dollars and change was maybe enough for two or three shirts and no food, but he’d be going to work soon, anyway. A middle-aged woman who smelled like cats approached us, and Kee tensed at the sight of her bright red apron and too-wide smile. She examined the both of us and her smile brightened in that self-righteous charitable way we learned to tolerate in time.

She actually grabbed Kee’s arm in her need to assist us and tried to steer him in the direction of shapeless dresses; he flinched and told her to fuck off. The smile was gone. We were asked to hurry and pay and leave the store before other customers were deterred by _our_ poor behavior.

Kee had gotten his shirts and another wound to his usual (cautiously) chipper mood. He had no money left for food after the cashier at the Salv had hassled him into donating the remaining two dollars left after purchasing the three plain black tees. At Burger King I spent all but three pennies on a ten-piece nuggets and two value fries, and water that we could drink for free. We sat at a rickety table and ate a while in silence.

“You know we’ll be going back there, right?” He was watching his reflection ripple in the water cup. I nodded and popped another salty fry into my mouth.


	6. Chapter 6

Satisfied that he wouldn’t go to work hungry again, I was able to let Kee get on the bus headed uptown. I hugged him quick before he got on; my face pressed against his shoulder, I got an eyeful of the bruise, worse than I remembered. I made a mental note to bring it up tonight, or in the morning if he was too tired to be cooperative. I patted his back once, twice, and he was off to work at the Woods’s. I got on the next bus going in the opposite direction. It was a twenty-seven minute ride on a good day –few riders, light traffic— to get to the ECB.

I ran into Bilbo on one of the three steep flights up the stairs. His pink mouth pulled into a wide dimpled grin when he saw me. “Fili, my boy! So good to see a familiar face! Wonderful news, too –my brother-in-law brought in my mattress today. I won’t have to sleep at your place again.” He laughed and I rewarded his broad smile with a broader and brighter one, so big that it hurt my cheeks.

I noticed the antsy child at his side, hidden in a mop of dark curls. “Who’s this?” I asked innocently, getting down a little more to the boy’s level.

“This is my nephew, Frodo –say hi, Frodo— I’m watching him for the day. Why don’t you come upstairs and join us for tea?”

I didn’t much like tea. I was more of a coffee drinker, if I could get a hold of it. But I did like Bilbo, so I was easily led into his airy apartment. (His windows still had bug screens and could be left open without fear of infestation.)

“I wanted to speak with you this morning,” Bilbo apologized, pouring two cups, “but I had to go early to my sister’s house to help move the mattress with her husband. I came by afterward with this little one to see if you were around, but it seemed everyone had already gone for the day –and then I took Frodo to the park. We just came back.”

“We played catch,” Frodo quipped quietly. He couldn’t have been more than four or five years old and was a precious little boy. I asked if I could ruffle his soft hair, and he smiled and allowed it.

“We did indeed,” Bilbo grinned, sitting across from me. “Frodo, why don’t you go play with your Lego blocks? I need to have a little chat with Mr.—”

It felt almost like the awkward first-day introductions all over again, and I stiffened. “Just Fili,” I pressed, wanting to stay on a first name basis and feeling too young to be a “Mister” anything, even if surnames were of more importance to us.

Frodo nodded and ran off to the kitchen to play on the floor, which Bilbo must’ve mopped; the whole place looked much cleaner, if no more extravagant, than when I was there the day before.

Bilbo looked uncomfortable where he sat beside me, staring straight ahead for quite a bit and clearing his throat more than once. I almost got a chance to ask what was bothering him when he started abruptly: “I ought to get right down to it; come clean while I can.” He kept his voice low enough to stay between us, the child at play undisturbed. I was confused and waited for Bilbo to clarify. “I— I of course meant no harm, but my original design was to be very secretive about the whole business. But if I’m going to get the information I seek, I need to be more straightforward in pursuing the information.”

“Bilbo..?” His odd tone was starting to scare me a little. I backed into the arm of the dingy sofa but he was quick to reassure me.

“Fili, no, don’t worry! I only want to tell you what I’m after in the course of my study –and possibly ask some help of you.”

I was a little more at ease but no less confused. “What— What about?”

“My study is on your people, your group that came here to this country en masse twenty years ago. A small group but the entirety of it relocated to this small section of city. I want to know why, and what life here anew has given or denied these people from Erebor.” He was slipping into academia but I refused to let it wedge between us. I listened on carefully. “I want to get to know you all; I want to know your culture and how it interacts with the surrounding culture of the city and the nation as a whole. I’m monstrously curious about it all. I plan to write a book on the subject, because there is not one adequately detailed account of it all to be found! Can you believe it?”

I’d grown up the product of a displaced people in a country very knew and conflicting with our ways. Yes, I could believe that the educational system would bury us. I knew that in elementary school. But Bilbo’s question was probably rhetorical, so I just nodded and let him go on again. He seemed very passionate about the issue and it would be a shame to cut him off.

“That is why I am here. I’m a sociology scholar dipping my toe in the deep end of cultural and urban anthropology. I want to understand and to educate –I want to help both sides of this wall—” (he patted the plaster behind him) “— each understand the other.” He took a deep breath to calm himself. His face had gone red and his voice was becoming hoarse, and it made something swell in my chest to see him so riled up over something that had so very little to do with him. “Will you help me?”

I couldn’t turn it down. “Yes. Yes, Bilbo, I’ll help you.” I tried not to sound too eager.

* * *

 

The first thing I asked was why he’d “come clean,” as he’d called it, so suddenly. He chuckled and replied, “I realized last night with your uncle that I wasn’t going to make much headway if I didn’t have a mediator for the project: someone compassionate to both the residents of the building and my research. You told me that the people here, the…”

‘Khazash’ came quickly to my throat but stopped there. I was worried Bilbo might not be welcomed to use the word, so I made one up for him to use for now, until a better phrase was worked out: “Ereborians?” The word sounded and tasted awful on my tongue but he quickly took it up, and it was good enough for now.

“Yes, there we go,” he grinned. “You told me they might not be welcoming to my intrusion. Honestly, I probably should’ve thought that through before I moved here.” The landlord was not Khazash himself, a constant dilemma; but still, he owned the building and rented out filthy broken apartments for cheaper than other filthy broken apartments in the city. Bilbo pulled a small notepad and pencil from his pocket and flipped to a blank page. “Can I ask who in the building speaks English, and who I would need a translator for? I would like to speak to as many people as will permit me.”

I thought it over for a long moment, and tried to make a list of all the Khazash that, even if they wouldn’t been keen on it, I might at all be able to convince to talk with Bilbo –there were many I knew better than others, and Uncle and Ma’s high regard among them gave me some standing of my own (plus I was pretty well-liked on my own merit.) Once I’d compiled a list of fourteen and subtracted myself (of course I’d talk to him!) I divided it up by who spoke English how well.

I told him that it was me, Kee, and Ori (a timid teen living in the basement) who were fluent in English, brought up through the language-exclusive school system where we’d been forced to learn it abruptly after speaking Khuzdul all our young lives. I said that I was the oldest of the children born here, then Kee and Ori two and three years later –all the other children were probably too young to get any other noteworthy information from.

Two of the remaining eleven I’d singled out, Bofur and Nori, were highly proficient in English and could easily get through an interview –“but Nori’s currently serving two months.” Bilbo nodded and said he might be able to speak with him when he got out; I winced and told him quietly not to count on it. Nori would probably be back in as soon as he got out.

Nine left –Uncle Thorin and Bombur both could hold conversation but might need some translating in between, which I would be happy to sit for. Bilbo smiled and made note; he was writing names and levels at which they could speak the language, and for a moment, I didn’t like that. I thought to take the notepad from him and ask why he wrote it like we were being graded, but I held my tongue and tucked my twitching fingers under my thighs.

There wouldn’t be much hope to speak to the remaining seven without my help. Dwalin, if he even agreed to participate, had limited speaking proficiency in English. He could understand it much better on sight or sound than he could produce from his own head. Gloin and Dori spoke some English, enough to get their work done (Gloin was a mail carrier and Dori lived upstate serving some wealthy family like Kee did, only legally and making better money for it. I had no idea how to get a hold of the latter but trusted Ori could get him on the phone long enough to translate himself.) Ma had come to the country in early adulthood with a child (me) on the way and had had no time from the very beginning to learn more than bits and pieces of English in conversation. She spoke a broken language, and not at all if it wasn’t absolutely necessary (I was tentative even including her on the list, but convinced myself she’d do it for me.) Oin was much the same in his understanding of the language, too old and deaf to have learned much but he could theoretically survive probably. Balin and Bifur spoke no English at all.

Bilbo was ecstatic about the detail I apparently gave him, even when I left a lot of it still concealed. When he put the note paper away I felt ready to pull my hands from under my ass. At length I asked, “So where do we go from here?”

He looked to me in a way that seemed to expect I would provide my own answer, and after a moment he said as much: “It’s up to you, Fili –I know so little about how these people might take to my questions. (You’re really going to prove an invaluable asset to my study, I can tell!)”

I smiled a little at the praise and rubbed the back of my sweaty dirty neck. I really did need a shower, but that was pushed out of mind when I started to mull over how to approach everyone about the research Bilbo was doing. I could tell them he was genuinely looking to learn about our culture, rather than impose  his own –but they might not believe me. I almost didn’t expect them to. I would need something more concrete when I approached them (without Bilbo: he might put them on edge despite his sweet manner and very real interest in getting to know them.) I clucked my tongue against the sore inside of my cheek. “Do you have the questions ready that I could maybe show them in advance, before they agree?”

Bilbo stiffened and shook his head, running a hand over his slim thigh. I fought against my jaw with the will of its own, trying to take my bottom lip between my teeth. I was trying not to stare but he kept on rubbing until “I don’t, I’m afraid. I’ll tell you what: I’ll make up a list of basic questions to ask and I’ll show you tomorrow. Why don’t we meet for lunch?”

I nodded a little too eagerly; my urge to spend time with Bilbo outside the building overrode the back-of-my-head knowledge that I was flat broke.


	7. Chapter 7

There were three computers on the first floor of the ECB, squeezed into a studio apartment that had been gutted and was now used as a sort of “all-purpose room” (as the landlord called it.) They lined the wall against the outer wall –there had been four, but one had been nabbed through the open window. When I heard about it I couldn’t even get angry at the thief: how desperate or ill must someone be to jack a sixteen-year-old computer?

Of the three that remained, one had caught a bug and when the Blue Screen of Death reared its ugly neon self, I was asked what we could do. Apparently I was either the most modern-tech-savvy in the building, or Gloin (who had been out of work at the time, and searching for jobs online when the local hiring well had run dry) just couldn’t think of who else to ask. One look at the problem, how the damn thing wouldn’t even turn on, and I told him to just try another one, because this was a paperweight now.

The one lined up next to it (after the pathetic burglary) was had plenty of viruses of its own, but none of them fatal. It was slow and you just had to be careful. But there was one –one that still worked as well as any computer from the nineties was ever going to work today.

Yes, there was one that worked; one that had really shitty internet we all chipped in for, because the password was changed once a month, and when we paid the three dollars we could have it –and if everyone didn’t pay up, prices went up. The adults tended to give first dibs to the students, but some surlier elders said that we had computers at school and should make use of those. But today, there was nobody in that god forsaken hovel and I could sit on the dusty floor and get online with the shitty internet I was so blessed to spend my money on.

I checked my email first thing. It was starting to get dark out and the shade of the building across the street was a huge relief. I had eight unread messages, and checked them all.

> From: thighhighsforguys
> 
> _Hey Fee just wanted to let you know I’m not coming home tonight. Something came up and I’m spending the night with the Woodses (blech). See you in the morning. Tell Ma where I am. Love you. Night._

I crinkled my nose at this. I really didn’t like the idea of Kee staying over there for the night… something about it just seemed wrong, and that he’d emailed instead of called was kind of shitty for him to do. What if I hadn’t gotten the chance, and Ma and Uncle and I were all left to worry ourselves sick? I ignored my frustration and sent a quick reply.

> _Okay. Next time call, dumbass. Love you too. Night._

The next few emails were reminders from professors about assignments long overdue. One was sent to the whole class and I had already turn it in, but the other three left a sinking feeling in my gut. I deleted them but the anxiety over my incomplete work remained. Two more emails were junk.

The final one, the oldest, was from a CC school email, username bowmansig. Curious, I checked it out.

> From: bowmansig
> 
> _Hi Fili. I hope you don’t mind me digging out your email address but I wanted to talk to you where we both have time to carefully consider what we say before we say it. I spoke to you in school the other day –the one who rudely asked if you dyed your hair. I didn’t mean anything by it, I was genuinely curious because I saw the roots… Anyway, my well-meaning doesn’t mean much here; there’s no excusing how I spoke to you and that’s the first reason I wanted to speak to you –to apologize. The other, I was hoping we could meet somewhere to discuss more thoroughly, but it has to do with your YouTube channel. I work in the makeup and practical effects department at EFA (an intern but we all have to start somewhere) and my boss has been wanting to get publicity, and I’ve been rearing to work with someone of your level of production. Maybe we could all help each other out._
> 
> _Sincerely yours and awaiting reply, Sigrid G. Bowman_

The whole thing had caught me rather off guard and I didn’t know where to start. Should I say she didn’t need to apologize? (No, she kinda did, and I’m glad she did –I’ll say I forgive her.) What about this offer? I know nothing about what she’s suggesting but maybe I should look into it while the door’s wide open? I wasn’t sure. I gave her a noncommittal reply in short:

> _You’re forgiven. I’m free Tuesday after class, if that works for you. Thanks. Fili._

* * *

Kee arrived home early the next morning in a better mood than he’d been in all week, smiling at nothing I could make sense of and I started to think he was delirious. When I asked he just brushed it off and said it was nothing –that he’d had a good night— and scrunched his face up. “Do we have any aspirin?” Of course we didn’t. I pulled out my bent-up notebook and started brainstorming for the new video my subscribers were dying for.

Before noon –before I was supposed to get lunch with Bilbo, Kee was running a fever and I had to go down the hall to tell Bilbo that I couldn’t make it to our lunch (date), not today. Bilbo waved it off with a broad smile, and it would’ve been a gesture I was already sick of receiving today if he hadn’t followed it up with “Why don’t we just do it at your place?”

Despite being sick, Kee was still in a pretty good mood when Bilbo came over. The man had gone and picked up takeout from the corner, and we sat around in a circle on the floor with paper plates and soda and pizza I’d have to scrounge to pay him back for. Kee was wrapped in a blanket and leaning against my shoulder, picking the cheese off his slice because he just wanted the bread and sauce and pepperoni. I rubbed his shoulder when he groaned or whined in discomfort; Bilbo watched us rather comfortably.

“It’s sweet that you take care of him,” he smiled, biting into another slice. I blushed and smiled back, nodding and bumping my cheek against the tousled hair tickling my jaw (Kee was falling in and out of sleep as the afternoon wore on.) Bilbo plucked his notepad from his pocket and flipped through. “I have the questions ready. There would of course be follow-ups to specific pieces of information I get; and I’d like to record them for the sake of accuracy. I wouldn’t be taken seriously even by myself if I misquoted anything.”

“Most of them barely speak English,” I reminded gently, sliding my plate a little ways across the floor. I wasn’t hungry anymore, wrapped up in Bilbo— in his work.

“I know. I was hoping I could even use some of the language –what do you call it?” I told him. “Ah, yes. I was hoping you could maybe transcribe some bits, but only if you’re alright doing it. I don’t want to pressure you or anything; I… can’t afford to pay you for your help right now.”

And even for Bilbo, knowing I had gotten into this assistance for him and not for a paycheck (it had never even come up until now), I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed at the prospect that I could’ve been paid and wasn’t going to. I shook my head and forced a wry smile, but when I told him it was fine the corners of his mouth fell even further toward his chin. I told him I’d take a look at the questions and we could talk more in private when I didn’t have the little lump leaning against my side. His smile returned a little bit and we moved on.

* * *

 

All but actually delirious with fever that night, when we were alone in our little bed, Kee told me what he’d been doing at the Woodses’ home last night. “I…” He giggled. “I was with their daughter. She’s really sweet.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I planned to divide the chapter POVs more evenly between Fili and Kili (with Bilbo thrown in every once in a while) but realized that's impractical for this chronological story. Points of view will always be indicated when there is a change from the last chapter, and there won't be changes in the middle of chapters, to keep things more simple. 
> 
> ALSO Fee&Kee now have a blog! http://thighhighsforguys.tumblr.com (password is: amanda). You can go and have fun and interact with them!
> 
> Thank you and enjoy ^-^"

KILI

* * *

 

I didn’t get to go in to work that weekend –seventy-two dollars lost— and with Fee home, acting as a nurse and guard dog, I wasn’t allowed to get out of bed. I was back to a slightly-higher-than-normal temperature by Saturday night, but he told me (in that big-brother voice I have a hard time arguing) that I was gonna be better for school on Monday and then I’d be ready to go back to work.

I hate work. I do, everyone does; just the idea of having to do anything for money leaves a bad taste in my mouth, because the people I work for can afford to take weeks of leisure and go on expensive vacations and not be tied down. They’ll never have to worry about money –I didn’t grow up with that luxury, no one I knew did. We lived in tiny little apartments and shared beds and couches with family, and ate four-day-old leftovers because there was nothing else to make in the fridge. The Woodses got to eat steaks and fancy undercooked fish every night, and I came home from their place on a Thursday or Friday to Sunday’s boiled chicken and instant potatoes that Fee was nice enough to fry in old cooking oil.

Groceries were cheapest on Sundays and we all made a day of it. Most of the adults were off of work and could take their children and crowd themselves onto the bus to the supermarket so they could be there when it opened, before the good-stuff-on-sale was gone. The younger ones –myself still included— would raid the free samples, because gods knew how long it had been since they’d put something fresh in their tummies. Fee had outgrown that, settling in with the adults in their quiet, hungry embarrassment, too shy or too proud to take something from the friendly server carts.

I wanted to go that Sunday, and watched through the open bedroom door as Ma got ready to go. She always took Sundays off: the sort of matriarch of the building alongside Uncle’s patriarch, it was most important for her to get food not only to put in her own boys’ mouths but for other families whose parents absolutely couldn’t get off work that day. She had a list that almost reached the floor, full of things that cost five dollars or less. Everything else might need to be sacrified –I didn’t miss the way she patted the modest wad of cash in her pocket.

‘Fili! Come on, we’ve got to get going.’ It was six in the morning and my big brother stirred in the bed next to me. I nudged him with my elbow and he groaned. I reached to his forehead to make sure I hadn’t gotten him sick, and he was sweaty and clammy but not feverish. Ma called out again. “Fili!”

“I’m coming, Ma, I’m coming…” In his half-sleep I needed to remind him that Ma would get annoyed quickly if he kept up with the English. ‘I raised you boys to speak your people’s language, and around me you will speak it,’ she’d say. He shook his head and tied his hair back, and got up out of bed. I sighed and got up myself, but he stopped me. “You gotta stay and get better.” (Between the two of us, it was okay to speak English as long as Ma wasn’t there to hear it. ‘Whispering in a foreign language; what are you hiding from me?’ she’d tease us, with the declining lilt of sadness in her voice. She didn’t trust English any more than the people in this country who spoke it.)

I stood in a sudden huff anyway and tried to get Ma to override this. ‘Ma, do I have to stay in?’ I wanted to go to the store and get the free samples we could never afford to buy; I wanted to go to work and make a bit of money with the extra hours I didn’t get on weekdays. ‘I wanna go.’

‘You can’t afford to miss school.’ She carefully slung her knockoff bag (a Mother’s Day gift Fee and I had surprised her with) over her shoulder and looked stern so I couldn’t argue. ‘You have school to worry about. Stay in –get well, and you can go to work tomorrow. As for the store, you’ll come next week, or squeeze some time in between your classes and your job.’

I groaned and stomped back to bed, curling under the sheets, wincing and willing the lingering fever to just fuck off.

* * *

 

There was a concrete space behind the ECB where we could all gather for a communal Sunday dinner; it was something for everyone to look forward to after one long week and to get them through the next. Everyone drank if they were over fifteen; fourteen and under would watch jealously and have to be satisfied with their off-brand soda. (I remember those days, when Fee was drinking cheap beer and I was drinking cheap pop.)

One night a week we as a whole could be freely ourselves –happily burying our troubles in decent food, flushing doubts away in alcohol— and I was missing it.

Sheets wrapped tight around my shoulders and trailing behind me, I snuck into the vacant tenement across the hall and watched them through the window. I felt an upset feeling in my stomach, watching the dozens of them laugh and talk about the few lighter moments of their weeks, while I watched from a cracked window in the damp heat. It shouldn’t have hurt but it did, and I glared down in unsuppressed envy.

I thought about a lot of things when I was alone. While they got to forget their sorrows in each other, with nothing but myself and my thoughts they all betrayed me, turning back to awful things I’d done or awful things done to me. It was probably time to blog a bit, but I wouldn’t be able to get on a computer until I was no longer under quarantine. In the meantime, I returned to our apartment, pulled out a notebook (smaller than the one Fee wrote his video ideas in) and started on a quick list of things I could write about.

A while later, when I had four or five ideas and brief synopses scratched onto my notebook, Fee and Ori came in from the dinner. I hadn’t noticed until then that it had gotten dark out; we tended to leave the flickering ceiling bulb on all hours, so we could know if the power was shut off. Fee was carrying two plates of food. Ori had one plate and the necks of three bottles of beer wedged between his nubby fingers. Enough assured that one plate and one drink was for me, I smiled gratefully and took them. “Haven’t eaten all day,” I laughed, realizing it myself as the words came from my mouth. I pulled the meat from the bone (pork was on sale this week) and stuffed chunks of the chop into my mouth, savoring the typical seasonings that never seemed any less delicious. “How was the party?”

“It was fun,” Ori said simply, eating his own meat much the same as I ate mine. Fee didn’t seem to touch his food at all. He looked hot and sweaty and I wondered for a moment if he caught what I had. But Ori went on in his cheerful tone, “Everyone had great stories this week. I—” (he hiccupped and I almost snorted) “I’ll tell you everything when I’m less than a little bit tipsy.” He emphasized the lying slightness of his intoxication, holding his thumb and index finger too close together to be accurate. He was only a year into being able to drink with everyone else, finally the object of the younger children’s envy, but he couldn’t hold his liquor for anything. Even the watered down beer Bofur and Bombur would pick up in crates was too much for the kid still.

“I think…” Fee said at last, voice slurred and eyes watery with his own drink. He didn’t finish the sentence for a moment, taking another small and sloppy swig of the beer in his hand. “I think Or and I better get going. Back down, I mean.”

I laughed to myself and took a sip of my beer. Someone would be going down, all right, but not to the party.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (sort of nsfw bits in this chapter)

I typed the title of the entry into the heading, fingertips bobbing and tingling with the same elicit thrill that thrummed through my body.

> _Forgive Me, Bloggers –for I have Sinned._

(I tagged it in advance, so no one would unsuspectingly stumble upon a brief account of my escapades with my anonymous sweetheart.)

> _I should’ve told you about my Fiery Empress sooner._
> 
> _It lasted for some time as nothing but longing glances. She sat at the desk in her bedroom, studying for her exams –I swept her floor and caught her eye on my way out. She sat at the fine table with fine food and a fine family, I suppose –I stood at the kitchen sink washing the dishes the cook had used, not too far to catch her watching me with some unfamiliar interest. It seemed, at first, that I intrigued her, and for weeks my defensiveness misread her interest as disdain, and avoided her eye. I had liked her otherwise; I would hate to learn how she might think of me, but it was painful then to think of her._
> 
> _But she is a girl who has nothing to lose, so when she deemed the time right (i.e. neither her father nor brother around to catch us) she took me aside and, with some initial resistance and argument she did not give in to, opened herself to me. My walls collapsed, breath hitching, heart racing. Only moments later my chapped lips were glossed with the cherry flavor of her giggling mouth, and then again, and many more times before the coast was not clear enough to go on as the heavy air between us called. But we were not discovered._
> 
> _She never had any hesitation to treat me well in the presence of her family and their elite social circle. I was never just “the help” to her, a houseboy that tidied up every day but not very useful besides (so her brother said), and had an air of authority when she openly called out anyone who treated me poorly. She offered to buy me things I could never afford in my wildest fantasies, because the accumulation of her allowance from her father and the money from her work summed up to more than I’d ever see in my life. She wanted beside herself, the Princess, a Prince she could make from a Pauper. But every offer was met with a grateful dismissal, because I did not deserve the money, the gifts, and I did not deserve her. But she seemed intent on convincing me otherwise: when we were alone I felt even more her tenderness toward me in her gentle words whispered into my ear, in the sweet way her lips found mine in the dim light of her bedroom._
> 
> _It wasn’t until Friday night that we made it to her bed._

I needed a moment to pull myself together. Everything was still so fresh in my memory that it was a perfect time to describe it but almost overwhelming as my senses brought it on again in waves, as if she were here with me as I wrote out our abridged story. I tilted my head back, struggled with a steadying breath and put out the fire in my nerves. My fingers resumed tapping at lightning pace, the clack of the keys blending into one another until it seemed like a constant echo of itself.

> _I can still feel her everywhere. The warm snow of her skin growing hot under my exploring fingers (the same burning blush was brought to every inch of my skin her delicate hands slid over.) Her hot breath and moaning pleas against my ear –the taste of her on my tongue. She was the first person I’d ever touched in this way; she was the first person I’d ever wanted to touch me the same. Even in the hottest moments of time together, when her questing fingers wandered with question along my inner thigh, I was uncertain –not about her, not about us, but about myself. Or, rather, how my own climax would need to be reached. My tongue had brought her to delicious completion already, and when she came down from her high she wanted to return the favor. “Only if you’re okay.”_
> 
> _Her concern was touching and I couldn’t deny that I wanted it as badly as she did. But I was scared. And when she realized I was scared, she held my hand and told me –in her sweet voice— that we could stop here. There was sadness in it, though: something like guilt, because she had been brought to orgasm and I hadn’t. I squeezed her fingers and brought them up to kiss the pale knuckles. I told her she was too sweet, and that maybe –in time, hopefully soon— I could figure something out. She moved back up to kiss me, pressing her bare body against mine-still-clothed, and promised we’d figure it out together._

I thought about posting it. I thought about what posting all of this would mean for her, for me, for us. This was such intimacy, a tender love I had never associated with the wanton carnal sex I was almost repulsed by. She loved me, and I loved her, and I deleted the post before it was ever posted. I put up something small in its place, the title changed, the message simpler –a single sentence— and more grateful but less so than I could ever put into words.

> _This day –and every day— is for my sweet, my love, who loves me in ways I never thought I’d be blessed to know._


	10. Chapter 10

I was the guinea pig.

Somehow Bilbo had come to the conclusion that I might be appropriate to ask his questions first –he said he had some general inquiries and then some specifically aimed at me, and that made me nervous. Fee’s inexplicable confidence in him wasn’t much comfort, but it was enough to get me to agree to talk.

“Ready?”

We were in the dark basement of the Community College library. Fee had led us to this back corner where you could hear the construction going on a floor up but no one but a stray passerby might come across us. The chairs were old and creaky, but the torn cushioned seats were comfortable enough that I didn’t have to squirm too much. I pulled my knees up to me chest, picking at my nails and biting jagged ends off. Fee was close next to me, leaning over the arm of the chair in my direction, so he could either rub my shoulder if I got too antsy or grab my arm if I tried to leave.

Bilbo was across from us in a less comfortable seat. I kept a steady gaze on him, sizing him up, gauging his intentions; out of the corner of my eye I saw Fee was watching him too, but in a different context. Bilbo smiled at us both, adjusted his glasses, shifted his notebook on his knee. I gave him permission to record it as long as I could post the transcript of this interview on my blog. “Sounds fair,” he conceded with a professional grin.

“Kee? Are you ready?”

“Yeah.” I stopped biting my thumbnail and looked right at my knees. They were bruised pretty badly under my loose jeans; all those stairs we would be trekking back up would be a literal pain when we were done. “Yeah, I’m ready.”

Bilbo smiled and readied his pencil. “Now –I have questions ready for you, as I already spoke to you about. But if you have anything you want to talk about that digresses from the questions, feel free to speak up. This is your time to give your story.”

I knew what that meant. I didn’t say anything for a minute while I chewed a bit of skin off my lip. “’kay.”

“Very good.” Fee squeezed my arm and Bilbo started. “I’ll start out with something broad. Hm. What is it like for you, being of the first-generation of your people in this country?”

I shrugged and crinkled my nose, still glaring at my knees, picking at the whole in my pants. “That’s not a very good question. What do you mean, what’s it like? I don’t know what you want me to say.”

Bilbo looked a little taken aback. “I— don’t want you to say anything. Not anything specific, anyway. Just… tell me how you feel about it.”

“I don’t feel anything, really. I mean—” I winced and looked to Fee, who shrugged. For once he didn’t seem to know what I was thinking, couldn’t elaborate for me where I failed to do it myself. Eyebrows drawn tight together in frustration, I had to verbalize myself. “Us kids born here, and anyone who was young enough to go through the school system here: we kind of live an in-between kind of life. At home, everything is Khazash culture. The language, food, family dynamics and interactions –anything that could be salvaged has been, because none of the adults will let it go. It’s very strict, they enforce it. I’m not allowed to speak English in front of my mother. Some of the adults don’t even speak English at all. If anyone ever needs to speak to them and don’t understand Khuzdul (and that’s a hell of a lot of people) me or Fee or Ori are called in to translate. But did you know? There’s no way to directly translate one into the other.”

Bilbo seemed intrigued at that, scrawling a quick note onto his paper. “And so how do you translate?”

“It’s pretty slow, actually. We have to listen to what’s being said in one language and figure out the equivalent in the other. And, I mean –for the adults that do learn, I am impressed, because it’s not easy. I guess that’s part of why so many don’t.”

And I really was happy for anyone who did make the effort to learn –I wish I could make that kind of commitment to something so difficult. I wish I could learn some way to fit in better when everyone around me didn’t seem to understand.

I shook my head and turned back to what I was saying before; the professor listening was hanging on my every word. I had to make it worth his while. “But the minute we step out of that building, we have to take on an entirely different identity, because it’s either blend in or stand out in all the wrong ways. You don’t know what it’s like for people to think you don’t speak English. That’s— That’s what it’s like being the first generation here.”

“You’re very well-spoken about this, very passionate.”

“Should I be anything less? I mean, this is our lives. Wouldn’t you be passionate talking about your life?”

Bilbo smiled the kind of smile that made me understand why Fee trusted him. “I suppose I would be, or should be. Not everyone is so invested even in their own lives.”

I had to laugh a little. “They really should be. They’re gonna lead some pretty miserable lives.”

“Do you consider yourself generally happy, Kili?”

I didn’t answer. He moved on.

“How important is your culture to you, and how important do you think it is that outsiders could understand it?”

“It’s important to me as much as it’s half of who I am, and who so many of my loved ones are. But like I said, everything is kind of divided. I wish integrating the two was easier, but I can’t bring them out and I can’t bring others in. I don’t know if it’s important to expose to others –I don’t think it is. We’re really the last of us. I think it could go on like this.”

“Would you, if you have children, raise them in the same sort of divided culture as you were raised in, to allow your children to both participate in the society they live in but instill their cultural identity?”

Again, I didn’t answer. When a silence settled between the three of us a little too long, I shifted, uncomfortable, asking, “Are we done?”

The professor tapped his pencil against his notebook, biting the inside of his cheek. “If you want to be. Is there… anything else you’d like to talk about?”

I knew what Bilbo was referring to. The way he tried to sidestep around the issue was too obvious to interpret any other way, and honestly, no, I didn’t want to talk about it. I shook my head, a forced smile for his and Fee’s sake, and stood, ready to leave. Before we left, I asked Bilbo for the recording so I could type it up for my blog –I’d write more extensively about it when my head was clearer and my heart was calmer.


	11. Chapter 11

Tauriel and I knew we couldn’t sneak around forever; we liked to play that we could, sneaking moments when no one was around, her giggling in our mischief and me doing the same because she was just so cute. But then we made that very big step in our relationship, one that –we could pretend all we want, but there was no real way around it— kind of did change everything. We had seen, felt, experienced each other in ways that we hadn’t before, and everything we’d done suddenly felt divided between “before” and “after.”

So for the first few days of the after, I was kinda nervous about the next time I’d be seeing her. Would her father or brother be around, treating me with the kind of condescension or contempt that they were prone to (that which my lovely lady would always come to save me from, praise or care made loud enough to hear but not so loud that they suspected anything)? Tauriel was her own person, of course, but I wasn’t sure I could look a man, my employer, in the eye so soon after I’d been with his naked daughter in her bed, bringing her to the highest of secret sensations.

I had convinced myself that, despite a substantial hold my lovely held over the men of her family, if we were to come out about our relationship (or gods forbid it be revealed some other way) then Thranduil would do his best to separate the two of us. I couldn’t afford to lose my job and I couldn’t afford to lose her, not when things were going so well, even if it was just us and the shadows. I dreaded a call requesting my resignation, especially when I couldn’t go in at all that weekend. I was on edge until –late Monday morning— I got a text from Tauriel.

_Meet me at my school._

There was something about the sentence on the dim screen –so certain in itself— that made me a bit flustered. I didn’t know what was going on; that unsettled me more than it should have. My mind went to the worst case scenario as my trembling thumbs put out a reply: _Something wrong?_ This was it, I thought; we’d been discovered, or she’d grown bored of me. Or realized that she could do so much better and believe me, she could.

Thankfully she was quick in return. _Nothing wrong. I miss you._

And knowing that she missed me, that she wanted to see me outside of her bedroom or little corners in her home, made it difficult to refuse.

* * *

I picked up a map in a little store along the way uptown so I could find where I was going. ( _I might be a while_ , I told her with an invisible smirk. _Give me the address and let me find my way. Enjoy yourself without me while you can!_ –she sent me a little emoticon in return that made me tingle.)

Tauriel was –like me— in her last year of school before she’d move on to higher education. I couldn’t expect that same privilege, and would probably end up working in a factory like Uncle and my father did. But in remembering what I didn’t have it was healthy to remember what my girlfriend (it made me blush to call her that) and Fee did. They would go on; they would make something of themselves because they were smart. Fee worked hard to keep himself in the community college, had a scholarship (we’d actively celebrated that for a week), and would be a doctor or something else where he could make money helping people. Tauriel would have her pick of universities and in a year she would be off in the world. I’d wait for her if she asked.

Given her family’s wealth, it was easy to imagine her going to a big private school, of which I couldn’t imagine the scope and elegance. I was right. She attended Angelwood Girls’ Academy (“Awga,” she’d call it with a precious laugh), a prestigious prep school that promised exactly what the name suggested –academics, girls, a sort of woods given the uncommon number of trees for the city –and, of course, my angel.

She sat on a stone wall among some blondes and brunettes, all talking among themselves. She was covered from neck to knee in white and blue plaid, and ate her lunch with her friends. When she saw me standing shyly twentyish feet away, she looked almost shocked by my presence. A dark blush came to my cheeks, the rest of my face gone white; I wondered if I should’ve come at all, maybe she’d meant to send that to someone else.

But she waved her friends off, setting her sushi aside and hopping gracefully down from the wall. She hurried over to me in a huff, eyes wide. “What are you doing here?”

 _I knew I shouldn’t have come –or I should’ve known I shouldn’t have come._ “I-I’m sorry, I just—”

I tried to turn and run but she grabbed my arm, a short chuckle coming through in her loss for words. “Kee, no –I mean what are you doing here now? It’s only twelve-thirty or something. Shouldn’t you be in school?”

 _Probably so, preferably not._ I scuffed my old sneaker against the dark pavement and shrugged. “Nothing for me there. I got through half the day, that’s more than enough.”

Tauriel stared at me for another moment before it clicked in her brilliant mind, and she nodded empathetically. The confusion on her face morphed into sunshine and her strong delicate hand moved from my arm to my hand. “Come on, let me introduce you!”

* * *

 

There was a shopping mall near the school, and Tauriel convinced her friends –Caeda and Eristel— that since I had skipped the rest of the school day to come all the way across town to see her, they ought to take me out for some fun. The girls eagerly agreed: for my sake, to please Tauriel, an excuse to go to the mall –their motives were unclear but they led the way with recursive enthusiasm.

So I went along with the idea –barely keeping up with the loud bubbly blondes and the dazzling redhead— not because I wanted to go to the mall but because it was something to do, better than nothing, and I could spend time with Tauriel. The potential quality time was not diminished by the tagalong girls; nothing was dull in my lover’s light.

We went into all kinds of stores. I sort of dragged a little because everything seemed to daunt or taunt me –I was bored, or at least broke, no matter where we went. Somehow, after an hour in the department store and the jewelry store (where I got to watch the blondes try on diamond necklaces and bracelets and wondered how they would look on Tauriel, who seemed aloof to everything), we ended up in what Eristel called “the sex shop.”

Maybe I’d been on the internet too often, or maybe I just knew too much about the depravity of humanity, but nothing in the shop scandalized me. Eristel (the less tolerable of the tagalongs) liked to pretend she was affronted by the phalluses but her act was almost as transparent as her flesh. Caeda played along. Tauriel was examining everything she came across, as if legitimately considering buying a few items from the wide (and allegedly appalling) selection. I gave them the same sort of overview but without any intent. Even if I had twenty dollars to spend on a thick purple vibrator, I couldn’t imagine why I would.

The two of us had somehow lost the other two to their antics in the store. Tauriel seemed to come across something of particular interest –a black strap-on, about five inches long and just over an inch thick. She looked at it longer than anything else and I was almost tempted to take it from her hands and put it back on the shelf, just to see what she would do. But I didn’t. I let her look it over as long as she wanted.

She looked down at me with a raised eyebrow, and that was when a redness came to my face. Nothing in that store shocked me except the look she gave me then, holding that black belted dildo.

“Do you wanna get it?”


	12. Chapter 12

The next morning I was called into Principal Mardeley’s office. This was no strange occurrence but my patience for the woman wore thinner and thinner every time I was all but dragged inside. Elkin, the receptionist, was a big brute of a man who would resort to brunt force if he had to –and I could hold my own against scrawny jackasses in the lunchroom (that was how I found myself there this morning) but I was no match for Elkin and I knew it, but sometimes I chose not to know it. He stared at me with those dead eyes, fists clenched and ready to grab me with those meaty hands because everyone knew I was a liar and he could get away with touching me. I didn’t fight him today; I was tired and sore from my most recent match. I’d been made to prove my manhood again and had come out strong but limping on the other side, with more wounded than my pride.

I sat in my usual position in front of her desk: feet up on the edge of the tattered chair, knees pulled and pressed to my chest, eyes low but face full of defiance.

Ms. Mardeley was none too pleased to see me; she didn’t conceal her heavy sigh when I stormed into her office and took a seat. She gave me her usual shaking-her-head look that was half pity, half relent –the kind that said in a defeated tone, “What are we going to do with you?” But it had nothing to do with me –I wasn’t the source of the issue, I was just dragged into it like Elkin might’ve dragged me into the room. I could put up a fight, try to stay in my right lane, and somehow I was pulled into that downward spiral that chased me tirelessly. But Ms. Mardeley was tired, and insufferable.

“Kiel? You got into another fight?” I didn’t respond –there was no way she could’ve expected me to respond, after we’d gone through this a million times already. “Kiel. I already called your uncle, he’s on his way. Would you like to tell me what happened while you’re waiting?”

I let out a bitter laugh at her phony saccharin tone. _Yes, Kiel got in a fight_ , I wanted to say. But Kili was off the hook, because Kili had nothing to do with it. Kili is an honorable young man who only got involved when someone called Kiel a dyke and touched their backside. It was the only appropriate response to such a blatant attack, Kili would tell the principal, and no one would believe him. That’s how it always goes for me. I didn’t respond to her repeated demands.

Ms. Mardeley gave up without success, and finally relented. “Kili.”

I looked up to her, an innocence in my expression as if I’d been cooperating the whole time (I was, as much as I could.)

“You got into enough trouble last year. Let’s not have a repeat of that, not in your final year here.”

“I couldn’t be more excited to get out of here, Minda. But I’m not gonna spend my final year of high school playing a door mat.”

She sighed and rubbed her temples, as if she was in the right to be frustrated. “I want to help you. But I need you to be open with me.” I would never trust her with a single detail; she’d twist it to her own advantage and leave me without a shred of relief. “What can I do to help you?”

I put my feet down on the dirty floor and sat up straighter. I looked her right in the eye; if she wanted to listen, if she really wanted to help, she’d damn well better pay attention. “You change my name on the school records like you were already told to. You start calling me by my name. You bring those jackasses harassing and assaulting me in and have them make up for all the detention I was wrongfully sentenced to last year. That, or pay my tuition to go to a school where I’m actually safe from people like them –and people like you.”

I didn’t like to talk about it, really. I wish it wasn’t something that I had to make a case for so many times, over and over again to the same people, but no matter what I said I couldn’t pull their heads out of their asses for them. I leaned back in the chair, suddenly hurting all over.

Mardeley removes her thin-framed glasses and folded her hands across her tilted forehead. She looked more drained than ever and I knew this was never going to work. Uncle arrived before she could respond, and in his presence I knew the matter was dropped again for something more familiar to her. She could dole out discipline and ignore the heart of the problem as long as there were ways around it.

“Mr. Oakenshield,” she greeted, standing slightly to shake his large hand. There was no other chair in the room; I moved to stand so he could take mine, but Uncle held my shoulder and kept me seated. He kept that palm rested protectively on my arm while he turned to Ms. Mardeley.

“What did my nephew do wrong?” He spoke slowly in his understanding of English, something I was always somehow proud to hear. In elementary school he had looked on with my writing workbook assignments, studying along with me. (Fee was left to his own work –he was always incredibly intelligent and Ma insisted he work in peace.) Uncle and I had bonded then and from then on, and I felt the warmth of the fire n his eyes aimed at Mardeley.

The frail chunky woman was used to dealing with parents and guardians, and was confident that even the most volatile response to a student’s misbehavior wasn’t too much for her to handle. “Mr. Oakenshield, Kili started a fight with two classmates.” She was careful with my name this time, but to say that I started the fight kept at least one foot firmly on the side of ignorance. She went on, “–one of them is only a sophomore, just fifteen years old.”

“He’s the one who hit me.” I was too embarrassed to say exactly what he had done in front of Uncle. “His older friend was my age and he threw the first punch. I don’t see how I started anything.”

The both of them gave me the same sort of look –Mardeley’s much sharper than Uncle’s— urging me to be quiet and let the grown-ups talk. I sank into my seat in a frustrated huff.

Uncle, at least, brought what I said into his own argument for my innocence, acting like a lawyer whose client was ordered to remain silent. “The boy old enough to assault my nephew, old enough to get hit back.” It was so casual, shrug and all; I snorted and Mardeley was ruffled. “Glad Kili hit him back.” He patted my shoulder and my chest swelled with pride. I struggled to keep a grin off my face between his gesture and Mardeley’s growing frustration.

“We cannot tolerate violence in this school Mr.—”

“Where the other boys?”

“The what?”

“The boys who hit first. Where are they?”

“They…” She was cornered by the truth; they were in class somewhere, probably bothering others still to make themselves look better. Sure, I was deemed their “special project,” but they were awful excuses for life all around. “The matter here is concerning your nephew—”

“Who puts up with more than his share of shit in this hole. I’m sure you know.”

“Kiel is—”

I winced at the word. No longer a name; it was almost a slur to my ears, used to deny me a right to my own identity. I buried my face back in my knees and zoned out the rest of what happened.

* * *

 

Uncle chaperoned my bus ride home. I was suspended for the rest of the week –Ma would be furious until I could get a word in to explain, and even then, she might still be disappointed. Not in me, of course –in the system that controls all this, decides who gets punished and for what, even when there’s no reason for it.

I was silent most of the way, staring straight ahead, not even taking interest in the curious folk we passed by. Uncle noticed my blankness and put his hand back on my shoulder. ‘Are you hungry?’

I shrugged. I hadn’t gotten to eat before the incident at lunch. ‘A little bit, I guess.’

Uncle got paid on Tuesdays. We got off at the stop closest to the bank; he cashed his check and we went and got pizza, just the two of us. And by the time I finished my second slice, I was starting to feel better. Still angry, still cheated, but better.


	13. Chapter 13

“You can sue them, you know.”

Between my banishment from school and the pizza with Uncle (who had to go back to work right after, and would be docked the time away), and when I would arrive at the Woods’s that evening, I spent nearly the entire time on the phone with Tauriel. She was about to get her period, she said, and had not gone to school that day to nurse her cramps. But she promised she was feeling better now, and was excited to see me. But when I told her about what happened, she was disgusted.

“Can’t afford a lawyer, and what on earth could a court case give me? Not my dignity, that’s out the window.” It was a joke I had to force myself to laugh at. Tauriel didn’t laugh. “Force them to use my real name? That’d be great but it’s not gonna defeat their ignorance.”

“Maybe if you win the case you could get enough to pay some tuition at a private school.” She was grasping at straws but firm in her resolve. She was determined to help me fix this recurrent dilemma. “One that will be less dickish about how they treat their students when there’s clearly something wrong.”

I smiled a little at her language, but only a little. “I’d honestly really rather not talk about it right now.”

One of the best things about Tauriel has always been that she listens. And when I told her I didn’t want to talk about it, even though the issue was far from solved, she let us drop it. “I think I’m taking some time off school. I’ll be cramping for another day or two and then my period will actually hit.” Her school incredibly gave leave for menstrual cycles; they counted as excused absences and were never questioned as long as the girls continued to make progress in their mastery of the material. Tauriel was an avid reader and would read from her textbook, cramps or no cramps. “But my father and brother are out of town, now. I don’t think they’d want me left all alone.” I could almost hear her little smile over the phone.

I smiled a little, too, a mischievous quirk of my lips, suddenly glad no one was around. “Think old Thrandy will pay me overtime?”

“If not then I will. Come over.”

* * *

 

When I arrived, Tauriel had ordered food for us. She needlessly apologized for the lack of personal touch, setting everything out nicely on the table. “I can’t cook for shit.” And we laughed and I kissed her cheek and said it was perfect. We sat down to what she’d ordered from a restaurant a few blocks away –a streak and potatoes for her, a bacon cheeseburger and fries for me. It was delicious, better than anything I could remember eating. We talked about everything and nothing, tiptoeing around a few choice topics we’d rather not address over dinner.

“If you’re still achy tomorrow, I’ll pick up something sweet for you on the way over.” I plopped a salty fry into my mouth. This shouldn’t have really been better than McDonald’s or something but it either was or I believed it was.

She smiled and nudged her mashed potatoes around on her plate. The steak was already eaten in careful slices. The juices were mixed into the fluffy whiteness. “You’re sweet enough as it is.” She crinkled her freckled nose at her own corniness and I was tempted to leaned across the table and kiss her silliness away. Instead I just shook my head, finishing dinner with a blissful smile on my face.

We laid together on the sofa for a while, watching some black-and-white romance on her enormous television. I was on my back, neck uncomfortably bent at the arm of the couch. Tauriel was sandwiched between me and the supporting cushions, on her stomach against my chest, long legs swaying in the still air where they bent at the knees. Every once in a while we’d distract each other from the film with little kisses: my lips to her head and her lips to my shoulder. But the more we kissed, the more we began to wander and soon the movie was forgotten entirely.

Her fingers moved to my jaw and she pulled me in for a deep and lazily passionate kiss. My breath hitched and sighed all my adoration for her into her hot mouth. She returned the favor and everything felt light and airy.

The film grew louder and became a nuisance to our escapades. “Where’s the remote…” she groaned halfheartedly, just to break the silence, but I brought it back with another open kiss. She let me shift to be a bit more comfortable before she pressed me down into the sofa, knees now holding her up from either side of my hips. We kept on kissing that way for a while.

When we parted again for breath, close enough that I could feel her warm puffs on my lips, she whispered, “Shall we take this somewhere else?” with such a beautiful smile full of lust and want and love that I followed her wherever she’d take me. We did indeed end up in her bedroom.

* * *

 

She pulled from her top drawer that same black dildo we’d looked at in the store the previous day. I was sprawled out on her soft and billowy sheets, in a tight tank and my boxers. My shirt and jeans were somewhere scattered across her cherry wood floor, kept company by Tauriel’s own shirt, her skirt and her socks. She moved back to stand in my line of view, a brilliant grin on her face as she handled the silicone in her nimble fingers. She was wearing only her matching black bra and panties now –I’d heard somewhere that  women only specifically match their underwear if they’re expecting to sleep with someone. I had no trouble believing –after Friday night and everything since— that Tauriel believed we could very well reach this point, and beyond, tonight.

I bit my lip to suppress a moan; watching her slender digits move over the shiny black phallus had me squirming on her bed and she was loving it. She came back onto the mattress beside me, leaning down to kiss me again, our lips moving slow and wet against each other’s. “Excited?” she giggled, pulling the belt of the strap-on and letting it snap back against the toy in her hand. I nodded eagerly, a string of saliva (I couldn’t tell whose) cool on my mouth. She kissed me again, and started to move her lips down my clothed body, kissing wetly against any material she encountered.

“Do you want to take these off?”

Her voice was so earnest in its concern that it was almost touching. Her fingers skimmed the waistband of my underwear, and she stared up at me, eyes full of that same question. I bit my lip hard, almost hard enough to draw blood. I had seen her naked but hadn’t been comfortable allowing her the same opportunity –I had to consider whether I was now, and whether I would ever be.

“Yes, please,” I answered at length, still uncertain even as I lifted my hips up off the bed.

She seemed to sense my nerves and rested a gentle hand on my hipbone. “We don’t have to,” she reminded me, sort of sternly, as if she wasn’t convinced that I wanted it as much as I did. I really did want it –I wanted to relinquish myself to the throes of passion with her, the loveliest of any girl I’d ever known. It was anxiety that kept holding me back.

Tauriel must have noticed. She moved back up so we were eye level and kissed me sweetly. I tried to lose myself in her lips but she pulled back all too quickly. Finger stroking a line down my jaw, she said softly, “We don’t have to do this if you don’t wanna. Just keep that in mind; I don’t want you to be uncomfortable.”

And with that in mind there were sudden tears in my eyes. I took her hand and squeezed it, and she kissed my white knuckles. A sweet smile came to her face and she kissed me again. “Not yet, then?” she mumbled against my cheek. I shook my head, and she kissed under my eye. “It can wait.”


	14. Chapter 14

**FILI**

There was a small window in the basement, barred up where it looked out into the street. I stood behind it, watching pairs of feet move by in the shade of twilight. I winced, and rubbed at the back of my neck; was the basement room always so blessedly cool as it was now against my bare skin? Or was it me? It was probably me.

I shouldn’t have been so unsatisfied.

Ori was great, really; and a lovely legal seventeen years old now. But he was starting to wake up now, and I’d regrettably have to leave him there.

“Fili?” he called quietly through the darkness; I almost moved to step closer, return to where he was barely covered by the sheets. “You’re going back upstairs?”

“Unless you want me to stay.”

“Please…”

I sighed under my breath and climbed into the mattress beside him. He wanted me again. He was intent on rebelling against how his brother had sheltered him –Dori wasn’t here now, and Nori was in jail. There was no one to stop him from chasing the pleasures of young adulthood. He’d jumped right in with me, apparently the first object of his affections: “I’ve had a crush on you for years, but you were always too old for me.” I almost hadn’t believed it until he dropped right to his knees for what he called my birthday present to him.

And maybe that’s why I wasn’t happy as I should’ve been after every time we fucked.

That and it wasn’t his face I saw when he brought me to climax.

* * *

When I went back upstairs, I decided to check on Bilbo before turning in for the night. I didn’t bother knocking on the door; it was always open. “Bilbo?”

He was surrounded by scattered papers, and seemed to be working frantically. It took him a minute to catch sight of me over the rim of his slipping glasses. “Oh— Fili!” He tried to move to come meet me at the door, but almost tripped on his work and I stepped inside instead. “So glad to see you. I have some more interviews I’ve been aching to conduct: starting with the rest of your family, if they have the time.”

I offered a stiff smile. “My, uh— Thorin will be home soon. He might be willing to talk with you.”

Bilbo flipped through his small notebook to an early entry. “He… He speaks English well enough, doesn’t he?”

I nodded. “Conversational English: enough to get by. But he might need some bit of help with translations and everything with words or phrases he doesn’t know.”

He grinned at me and adjusted his eyewear. “It’s a good thing I have you around, isn’t it?” He grabbed what I correctly guessed was his list of questions and marked a few of them. “I have…” He tallied them up, “Five questions for the patriarch of the community.” He smiled and gathered up a few more of his papers and started to put his shoes on. “Ready?”

“Yeah, whenever you are.” I held the door open for him to exit, but almost as soon as he was out the door, we bumped into the last person I wanted to see.

“Oh, you must be Ori.” Bilbo shook his hand, and the greeting was returned with near matched enthusiasm from the kid taken off guard. “Fili’s told me about you.”

It was then that a blush and a nervous smile came to the teen’s face. “Good things, I hope… but not everything.”

This encounter couldn’t end quickly enough. But it didn’t. It seemed to drag on as they caught up like old friends who hadn’t seen each other in years, as if they had ever seen each other at all. For some reason that I couldn’t pinpoint, in that moment, I didn’t want Bilbo to be speaking to Ori at all, ever. It felt like something akin to possessiveness, but I didn’t care about Ori like that. What did I care?

“I’ll come downstairs tomorrow and we can talk about it.” Bilbo must have explained what he was doing in the building in the first place: probably an abridged version of what he’d told me. And then the copper-haired man turned back, and relief washed over me.

“See you tomorrow,” I told the teen, and he smiled and waved before heading up to visit a cousin. Fuck. He wasn’t jealous or suspecting in the least. He thought I was much more serious about whatever the hell we were than I’d ever intended to be. Fuck.

* * *

 

Kee got home before Thorin did, looking the suspicious kind of content that he’d been lately, and it seemed to all have to do with his employer’s daughter. I bit my lip hard watching him, but didn’t say anything while Bilbo was around. We continued our game of Sudoku, and my brother plopped down next to me with a lollipop in his mouth. “What are you up to?”

I didn’t answer right away; Bilbo cleared his throat, an odd sound I hadn’t expected from him. “Sudoku; we’re solving a number puzzle.” I stared at him, and he stared at Kee, and Kee got quickly bored and went off to the bedroom.

Thorin got home next, about a half hour and four puzzles later, Bilbo quickly jumped to his feet and handed out his hand to shake. I gave Uncle a look and he reluctantly complied. “I hear you have questions,” he grunted, sitting down in Bilbo’s place on the couch.

“Yes… I would like to just ask you now, if that’s alright, and get it done in one session.”

“No more sessions…”

“Right… Well, I do have them all right here…”

They started, each going in with a very different attitude than the other. I was pretty indifferent, tired and wanting to go to bed, but every once in a while I was asked to translate something by either my friend or my uncle, or I caught Bilbo glancing discreetly at the bedroom door while Uncle was talking.

“I’m going to sleep,” Thorin eventually groaned, and I made room for him to lie down. Bilbo thanked him profusely for his valuable answers, and I escorted him to the door. I bid him goodnight and watched him go.

I quickly glanced to the stairwell, wondering if my mother or anyone would be coming up, but no one did. I headed in to hit the hay myself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure this chapter is any good and might eventually be deleted and the events inserted somewhere else, dispersed throughout the story. But after more than two months of hiatus, it's finally an update, even if not the best :') Hope you enjoyed!


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been so long since I've updated! But I've been finding more interest in this story again, so I hope I can give some more chapters soon enough! I have some ideas I'm excited about so yay :)

When I went to meet with Bilbo in the morning, I got a look at the notebook he carried in his pocket, and realized he had misspelled even more names than I’d figured. Even my own was transcribed incorrectly. I needed to bring it immediately to his attention.

“Bilbo?”

He was doing dishes, after we shared a simple breakfast of fried eggs on white toast, both cooked more thoroughly than we could usually get in our own kitchen. I thought I saw his ears perk up when he turned his focus to me, standing in the small entrance. “Yes?”

I waved the notebook a little above my shoulder, and thought maybe I shouldn’t have gone snooping like I did. Ma always said my curiosity would get the better of me every time. But if I didn’t know, he wouldn’t know. “You spelled, well, everyone’s name wrong.”

His face burned a bright red I felt sorry for. “Oh, I— I didn’t mean any offense!” He swiped at the notebook with a wet hand, but I didn’t let him nab it. I wouldn’t let him ruin his work; I told him to dry his hands, and he did on his pants. I wonder if such a well-mannered man would do the same if we weren’t so comfortable with each other, and a smile twitched at the crease of my lips. “Let me fix it right away.”

I relented and handed the book to him, and instructed him on the proper spelling. “It’s all really, er, phonetic.” At least the way we pronounced them. At least how I _usually_ pronounced them. Was I becoming more regionalized as I grew older? My own face almost as red as Bilbo’s, I tried to stammer out a response. “I don’t know if I threw you off somehow—”

“No, no, you’re golden. I must have been hard of hearing that day.” He asked me for corrections, that I show him how to properly spell and pronounce the names so he was getting everything as correct as he could. Some of the names sounded weird coming from him, and I wondered if anyone outside the complex had ever called many of them by name. We weren’t always given that dignity.

But I wanted to change the subject. “So, what’s on the agenda for today?”

“Well, I was hoping to speak to another potential interviewee.” He smiled a little, probably at the thought of furthering his study, learning more about our people. “Have you spoken to anyone else, asked who would be willing to speak to me?”

Fuck, I hadn’t.  “Um, no, I didn’t get the chance. But, um…” I was honestly not looking forward to translating right now, but Bilbo needed the assistance, and I wanted to help more than I didn’t want to stick around for an interview. But who was around? “I think my ma will be getting home soon…” She’d worked long hours but I may yet be able to convince her to talk. “We could try that.”

Bilbo grinned and nodded, taking up his larger notebook and recorder. “Yes, that sounds wonderful. I’ve been meaning to ask someone here about the causes of the, er, displacement.” He seemed uncomfortable using the word, but sounded like he had used it countless times to explain it before. “Shall we, then?”

I shook my head a little. “She won’t be home yet,” I reiterated. “But we can do, well, whatever until she gets back.”

He smiled a little softer. “Why don’t we go get some coffee, then?”

* * *

 

I didn’t often get the chance to have such finely brewed coffee, lightened with fresh cream; and Bilbo would not allow argument when he insisted on paying for my cup. For once I didn’t mind.

We settled in a booth in the corner, and even though the sweltering sunlight filtered in through the uncovered window, the hot taste in my mouth was still somehow refreshing. I probably needed the caffeine more lately than I’d allow myself to believe.

Bilbo himself got a cup of tea, and stirred it almost absently, watching me over the rim of his glasses. I turned to look out the window, until his voice brought me back. “Are you seeing anyone?”

I almost choked on my beverage, but was glad I didn’t make a mess of myself. “I’m— I’m not, not at the moment.” My options were pretty open –well, Ori was always a backup if I ever got truly lonely, but I wasn’t really dating anyone. “I haven’t been for a while now. But…” I moved the stirring stick around in my drink, staring at him in a way I hoped was telling enough. “I’m open to it. If anyone’s… interested…”

Bilbo just smirked and took a sip from his little cup. “I’m sure somebody is. I’m…” He bit his lip hard. “I’m rather interested in somebody myself, but I really shouldn’t be.” He leaned in a bit and lowered his voice, obviously uncomfortable speaking of this in public. I became more than curious. “He’s too young for me –far too young.”

I tried to laugh it off. “How young, exactly?”

“I could probably be his father, at my age.” He shook his head solemnly. “It’s a damn shame, really, that he would probably turn me away simply because of my age. I couldn’t blame him! It’s just a shame I had to fall for someone who is barely legal.”

That still sounded about right; sounded like I still had a shot. “I think if you asked, he might be interested.” I was near certain who he was talking about now, and it made my heart race.

“You really think so?”

“I do. I really think you should give it a shot.”

For a moment, he looked hopeful. But then the little quirk in his lips quickly fell. “No, no— At the moment we must maintain a strictly professional relationship. I cannot be involved with anyone in such a way right now.”

My only smile fell with that, but only a little. There was still a chance. There was still hope. “Alright, then.”

I took another sip of my coffee and glanced over to the counter. I hadn’t expected to see her there. Sigrid was ordering a drink of her own, and my sudden attention seemed to draw her own. She saw me. And she didn’t look very happy with me.

I looked back at Bilbo and quickly excused myself, promising to return in just a moment. I stood, leaving my coffee behind, and went to catch her before she could walk out. “Sigrid! Hi, small world, isn’t it?”

She nodded and tried to get around me, but I would catch her in conversation, if only to figure out what I’d done that made her look at me that way.

“Look, if this is about the email—”

“It’s not. I’m just… annoyed with myself, cancelling an appointment with my supervisor to meet with you on Tuesday.”

Oh fuck. I’d forgotten all about that.

“You could’ve at least given me a time to be disappointed, or tell me you weren’t coming so I wouldn’t miss out on anything.”

“I’m— I’m really sorry, I didn’t— Really, I just forgot. I’m sorry, I know it’s a dumb excuse, but I can’t check my email a lot, and I’ve been so busy…”

She seemed willing to believe it, but not willing to forgive me just yet. “Well, then… What am I supposed to do now that you stood me up?”

“It wasn’t a date, it was a business meeting.”

“Does it matter? Do you wanna work with me or not?”

“I do! I just have a lot going on and right now maybe isn’t the best time.”

She chewed the inside of her cheek and took a sip from her plastic cup. It smelled like a smoothie. “I’m free right after our class next week. Meet me then and there and this might still go somewhere.” She gave me an odd sort of look I wasn’t familiar with, and headed out and down the street.

In a little haze, I returned to Bilbo.

“Who was that?”

“Just a… friend from school.”

“Oh.” His smile had returned to his face. “She seems nice.”

I nodded dumbly and sat back down across from him. For several moments we sat in the white noise of the café. I heard a few orders and wondered if they would taste good. I almost regretted ordering a plain coffee. I wondered if Ma would be home on time or get stuck in traffic on the bus, or if the bus would ever arrive. I stared into my coffee cup and watched a few tiny bubbles swim and pop in the little layer of cream. It brought a small smile to my face.

Bilbo drew my attention once more as he cleared his throat, and I found myself smiling at him. I hadn’t felt such a warmth in my chest for someone before. If not for our conversation I wouldn’t have dared to hope he might me interested, too. But we had to maintain a professional relationship as long as his study was going on—

“So, you think your brother might be interested?”

I stared at him for a moment, eyes narrowed in confusion. “Interested in what?” But my phone cut off the conversation. Ma was home, and wondering where I was. “We better get going.”


	16. Chapter 16

Ma was sitting at the closed window, in the sweltering heat, when we got inside. I thought to suggest she sit on the sofa instead of her cot –she’d probably burn through the Plexiglas— but she had such a long and faraway look in her eyes I didn’t dare disrupt her peace. But when she did turn and see Bilbo with me, she offered a polite smile. “Good day, Mister Beggins.”

Bilbo was smart in not trying to correct her. “Good afternoon, ma’am,” he answered, bowing slightly and taking a seat at the closer end of the sofa. “And how are you doing today?”

I sat down next to him, and wondered how long Ma would carry the conversation in English. She was no fonder of the language than I’d ever known her to be. She must have some vague high opinion of Bilbo to speak to him like this. It made me happy to think so.

But she did eventually give in, and I was left to translate her words to our guest. And because she seemed very tired, I bridged the gap on both ends so she didn’t have to worry about figuring out what he might be saying in a second language.

“Fili, since I have some specific questions prepared to ask your mother—” (He whispered so as not to risk embarrassing her) “—would you mind giving me the most direct translation you can give, for the record? As in, speaking as though you’re your mother.” The request confused me at first, but after a moment it clicked, and I agreed. Bilbo grinned brightly. “Excellent! Well, we ought to get started…”

Ma faced him more directly, and I moved to sit on the cot with her, to be close enough to hear her quiet voice reserved for outsiders. She was none too submissive when it was only family around. She says it’s typical of women of Erebor, but I didn’t quite believe it.

The first few questions Bilbo asked seemed inconsequential enough. I wondered between translations why they couldn’t be asked of anyone in the complex. And when he followed them up with, “If you don’t mind me asking, what exactly was it that brought the people of Erebor to this city?” it seemed no different.

“Erebor was once a beautiful mountain rising from the sea, surrounded by fertile lands. Hundreds or thousands of our people lived above and under the ground: in huts lining the base of the steep slopes and in long expanses of caverns. We had all we could ever wish for, food, water from the streams, and family always there. That was what we called home. Many of us still do. But our home was destroyed more than twenty years ago.”

“What happened?” Bilbo asked, giving Ma a moment to collect her thoughts and gather her wits.

“A man came one night by sea. We do not speak his name now. But he came in an enormous metal ship with a fierce red dragon painted onto the side.” She heaved a breath and the story started to sink in for me. It didn’t seem shaping up to be the story we grew up on. “The man had been convinced that deep within the mountain were vast amounts of gold and jewels. And nothing my grandfather –the leader of our people— said could convince him otherwise.”

She wiped tears away. I had not seen my mother cry for her past.

“His… His men, his soldiers, herded us back into our homes while he set out looking for gems that were not there. Any of those inside the mountain, where he was trying to mine, were taken onto the ship. Never to be seen again. All except for my family –my grandfather, my father, my brothers and I. We were kept in our cousins’ home by the shore. We lost track of the time as days turned into weeks, but my father figured it must have been three weeks since we’d had fresh air. Food was scarce. The men outside were hard-pressed to feed us. Word was some starved for it, but not us. We saved and we suffered hunger but we lived.

“And then the fire started.”

Bilbo was writing intensely in his book as I told a story I myself was not familiar with.

“Fire started deep in the caverns, the new mines. The miners burned –so many of our people, forced to work for this horrible pale man, burned and suffocated in the smoke. The flames rose from the depths and leapt from the caves, and our trees and crops, and many homes, set alight.”

She sniffed and composed herself. Bilbo looked like he wanted to suggest a break, but he was just too engulfed now in the story. I felt bad for Ma but I wanted to know how this went now. I wanted to finally learn what really happened.

She looked at me, sadness in her eyes that didn’t look exclusively for the lost souls of the island. She was shattering a fantasy she had helped build for the children, so they didn’t have to know what truly happened to the families they never got to meet.

But she went on.

“By the time the man gave up, and his remaining men left the island, our population had dwindled to less than half. But how many had died, we would never know for sure. All that was certain was less than five hundred remained, including us, the ruling line. The food was burned; the stream was poison; our beautiful mountain was desecrated. There was nothing left for us there but memories. And memories we could take with us.

“So we fled. We made rafts of our homes and headed for mainland. But we didn’t know where we were going. The sun was hot and rations were horribly limited. There was little water to drink; many got sick trying to drink from the sea.

“By the time we reached the shore… we few remained.”

My heart was shattered. It hadn’t been some fantastical tale, or anything beside the horribly tragic reality I now knew. Hundreds had died needlessly. We came from a history once peaceful, and then the innocence of the Khazash ripped from them by gold sickness and greed.

I looked back at my mother. She was crying, for those lives lost. I had never seen her mourn this way.

Bilbo shut his notebook slowly, solemnly, not allowing a single sound to be heard from him. “I… think that will be quite enough for today. Thank you, ma’am, for speaking with me.”

She nodded and said nothing more. She just stared out the window.

I went to walk Bilbo back down the hall to his apartment. He awkwardly asked me inside for something to eat, but I declined. I told him I was going home, maybe take a nap, but instead I headed down the stairs. I heard my friend calling after me as I descended. I didn’t care. I needed to take a walk or something. I needed to clear my head.


	17. Chapter 17

Ma and I said nothing to each other until Sunday morning, and it was Kee that sort of broke the quiet in our house. On one hand I was annoyed with him for not being around much this week, barely taking the time to even call and say he’d be at the Woods’s; but preparation for the community dinner was never so silent, and I was glad to have a voice shatter the tension.

‘My friend says we can sue the school.’

Ma laughed softly, but I felt out of the loop. ‘Why would you sue the school?’

He sat backwards on a rickety chair Uncle had brought home from someone’s yard. The sign said FREE, and I decided to believe him. ‘Because of Mardeley.’ I remembered the principal from my own time at the school, and I could believe she was somehow to blame before I even know what happened. “And the assholes she lets get away with what they’re doing.”

‘Is that English I hear?’ Ma chided, glaring at him from where she stood peeling a mountain of potatoes. But neither of us wanted to think about mountains right now. ‘In my house?’

‘Sorry, Ma.’ He turned back to me. ‘Some jackasses in the lunch line decided to harass me, and one even tried to goose me through my shorts.’ I winced, and felt my blood boil. ‘And I was the only one who got in trouble.’

‘We’d sue if we could afford it,’ Ma concluded, as if she’d already made up her mind. But her response didn’t satisfy me in the least.

‘There has to be a way, Ma. Some kind of provision program, or… we bring the kids to criminal court! We wouldn’t be charged for that.’

‘Fili, it’s unfortunate you were raised in this city. You are still ignorant of how the world works.’

‘I’m not ignorant, I just want justice for my little brother.’

She sighed and set her peeler down on the counter. ‘There is no justice, child.’

I turned to Kee to see him when he argued for his own happiness, his own safety. Ma couldn’t be right on this matter –they had to fight! Kee couldn’t be asked to sit back and accept this when there was anything that could possibly be done. I knew this country better than my mother, she didn’t know the laws that must protect us from this kind of torment. They can turn us aside –they always have— but they couldn’t allow this to go on simply because they couldn’t afford a decent lawyer.

But Kee didn’t argue. He stared at the floor, scuffing his sneaker against the ratty carpet. He was giving up.

I sat back in my seat and just stared dumbly at him for a minute, lost in his resolve to not even try. I wished the silence had continued, and from there, it did.

* * *

 

It was apparently time I help with the cooking instead of just drinking and socializing with our neighbors. Uncle pulled me by the arm in the direction of the grill, and left me off with Bombur. Bombur was an incredibly large man, even among our rather heavy people. He was sweating profusely wear he stood and wasn’t afraid to cook over and open flame without a shirt on. He was confident in his size and I respected him for it. Bombur said little, and mostly instructed me with gestures. I tried to learn.

I figured I’d done a good job. The chicken was boiled until it was cooked through, white when it was cut through the middle, and the potatoes were fried over the flames. My mentor gave me a grunt of approval and stacked my work onto a large wooden platter for serving to the tables. I was rather proud of myself for that.

Everyone was talking and laughing, thoroughly enjoying themselves. This was everyone’s favorite time of the week, when everyone came together to catch up and relish in each other’s company before diving into another long work week. Some couldn’t make it due to hectic schedules at their jobs; I was lucky and unlucky enough to only work whenever I was needed. That wasn’t for a while, though: library work was scarce during the summer. I would hopefully be making more money soon.

Alcohol was finally brought in in crates just before sundown, the most eager men of our building carrying cases in on their shoulders from the van parked out front. I wanted to go and help out there but I was busy leaning over the new batch of diced potatoes on the fire.

Kee eventually came over to keep me company, the two of us alone as Bombur went to fetch the drinks before consuming a few himself. Kee had a beer in his hand and offered to share, which I thanked him for before taking a swig.

“Having fun over here.”

“Yeah, loads,” I laughed. “Wanna take over.” He shook his head but didn’t laugh much in return. “What’s wrong?”

“I… can’t go back to that school. I can’t stay there any longer.”

I nodded slowly, frowning sympathetically, knowing he didn’t have much of a choice. “It’s just one more year,” I reminded him in a fruitless effort to lift his spirits.

He was silent for a long moment, and shook his head. “It’s looking like this last year if gonna kill me.” Before I could scold him for being a little dramatic, he walked away, leaving the bottle with me.

I blew a strand of light wavy hair off of my forehead. I needed a break: a really, really long and calm break from everything. Looking around as the commotion was drowned out by the shriek of a siren, I remembered we all did.

I turned and through the falling darkness I saw a police car driving by, rolling slowly down our street. In our area it wasn’t an uncommon sight, but we could usually see them continuing on the opposite side of the building.

* * *

 

The heads and decided representatives of our group, Uncle and Ma went out front together to greet the officers. All of us quieted down as we waited to learn what was going on. The sun set behind the city skyline, and I put out the fire as there was no food left to be cooked. Rations seemed short this week.

I went to find Kee, but couldn’t pick him out of the dense crowd waiting for word from my family. I called out for him, but someone shushed me, and –feeling rather lost— I kept searching. But Kee looked to be gone completely.

It was twenty or thirty minutes before Uncle and Ma came back through the back door, expressions stiff, and all of us worried. There was complete silence in the yard as Uncle tried to gather his voice, but in the end it was my mother who spoke.

‘The city says we need some kind of permit to have this kind of gathering, where alcohol is served in such an amount. They say there are children here, and it is not an appropriate environment for them to experience every week, as when we are drinking we are deemed irresponsible.’ The calm venom in her voice was haunting. ‘They say we must stop this.’

I could feel the despair sink into everyone around me, and my heart broke for them. Their final escape from a long and strenuous life they led –taken from them. And what was worse was –from what I knew of gatherings in the rest of the city— it was complete bullshit.

I retreated to the back corner of the lot, the sights and sounds of the city –of carefree lives we’ve never known— surrounded me. My anger boiling over, I yanked my phone out of my pocket and called my brother. His familiar ringtone could not be heard behind me –he’d disappeared.

I got his voicemail. I was seething.

“Kili. The police are putting an end of the Sunday dinners. Family needs us. Get your ass back here or so help me—”

But he finally picked up before I could finish my vague threat. “Fee, what are you—”

“Where the hell are you?”

He was silent for a moment before sighing. I could almost see him running an exasperated hand through his hair. “I’m at the bus stop, waiting for a bus uptown. You have time to come join me if you want.”

I hesitated. I wanted to argue, tell him to come back, that everyone needed us. But as I thought about it, looking back at the huddled group grieving their good times, I realized they probably didn’t. We didn’t know their real struggles; we were born here, in a country I wouldn’t allow to fail us.

I would get our Sunday dinners back. I would get my little brother to a school where he would be safe. Even if it meant disappearing in this sorrowful hour.

“Alright, I’m on my way.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments make the world go round! (And bring replies faster!) :)
> 
> QUESTION: WHAT IS IT YOU GUYS LIKE ABOUT THIS STORY?


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS CHAPTER IS FOR THE ALWAYS LOVELY AMANDA (DIV2994) WHO TURNED 21 TODAY!! LOVE YOU ALWAYS, BABE, DON'T EVER CHANGE ♥♥♥

“How long did you think this could go on without telling me?”

I was trying to keep anything that could be heard as judgment or disdain out of my voice, because I was genuinely happy Kee could find someone he liked this much. And from what I knew of Tauriel (and that was actually very little) she seemed like a nice girl –and seeing them together when we got to the Woods home, I didn’t feel that protective-older-brother instinct boil in my heart. And that surprised me about as much as Kee’s reaction to me meeting his girlfriend for the first time, as if I had known about them all along.

“I… told you, didn’t I?”

I laughed softly. Maybe he did –I vaguely recalled something about him “being with her” that he told me when he was sick, but that seemed so distant a time now. Our routine little life was being quickly uprooted as the country my family (what was left of it) had escaped to was trying to take the last of their fond memories away from them. And I felt suddenly disconnected. Too much was changing; all of it too quickly.

“Well…” He cleared his throat but didn’t seem as awkward as he did a moment ago. “Fee, this is Tauriel. Tauriel, my brother, Fili.” He turned back to me. “Tau thinks she has an idea for how we can bring fate to our side.”

I couldn’t even pretend to know what he was talking about. “Kee, nothing’s ever gone right for us. What makes you think that’s gonna change, especially after tonight…”

“What happened tonight?” Tauriel’s voice held the same concern I was accustomed now to hearing in another outsider’s voice –she was one of two people I knew that maybe gave a shit about our people. And I found myself wishing the other was there.

And so I told them how the happy communal dinner had been interrupted by such horrible news, a dark note to maybe end the reprieves forever. I didn’t want to start tearing up as I spoke of so many other gloomy, even broken faces, but I couldn’t bring myself to apologize for my anguish. I looked my brother in the eye and saw the same sorrow in them, and that brought a fire back to my soul. “We have to do something.”

“And we will,” Tauriel insisted coolly, sitting down on the plush sofa.

“How?”

“If Ma won’t take the school to court…” He sort of trailed off there, and left me wondering. “Tau has a plan,” Kee answered, pride in his smile, and let the other explain, watching her with light in his eyes.

“I’m gonna try to convince a family friend –who happens to be a prominent attorney as well, and often work pro bono— to threaten the fuckers who keep hurting Kili with assault charges, and the school with a whopping assault and child endangerment case for allowing such heinous abuse go on not only unchecked and without reprimand, but punishing the victim.” Her face went the same shade as her hair, and Kee put a hand in hers, providing some comfort I was personally unfamiliar with. “If they want to stay out of court, they can easily come out of pocket. If it does come before a judge, I’m certain what will be won would be more than enough.”

“More than enough to make better lives for ourselves, and help out everyone else we care about who’re struggling.”

The redheaded girl was a somewhat calming presence then; her confidence as she went on was almost encouraging. But until there was anything set in motion, and not just a fantasy wafting around in the minds of the ignorant and the desperate, I couldn’t dare to dream.

* * *

 

Kee stayed the night there; the rest of the family away, he probably planned on staying longer than just that one night. With how desolate things were at home, I couldn’t blame him. In the morning he’d get his stuff, at least, gauge the situation, and decide what to do. We hugged and I left him in the perceptibly capable hands of his beloved.

I didn’t take a bus; the late night city bus was something out of a horror movie. So I walked, and walked, and tried to think but my mind wasn’t up to it. I kept under the streetlights and prayed I wouldn’t get mugged, but walking was still the better of two evils.

When I got back at dawn, Bilbo was standing outside the ECB, his few belongings scattering the sidewalk around him. I approached, somewhat stunned.

“Bilbo? What’s going on?”

He turned and offered me that familiar smile, but this time his eyes were empty of their usual twinkle. It made my skin crawl. “I… figure this isn’t the best time to continue with my work. Too many obstacles have emerged recently and I’d be better to come at a later time.”

My blood froze. “Where will you go?”

He shrugged and stuffed his hands into his pockets. The heatwave had subsided; it was unusually cold. “My sister will take me in for a few weeks. Frodo is starting school, and I can return to my position at the college, with enough time to be home and watch him while his mother and father are at work.”

“And… when can we, um, meet up again?”

He sighed softly and pushed his glasses up his nose. “I suppose when the time permits it. But given how far I’ll be travelling… I don’t imagine anytime soon.” He held out a hand for me to shake, and I saw how he struggled to keep a smile on his face. I didn’t bother; something inside me was shattering. “Thank you for everything.”

“Bilbo—” But what could I do? “Please… stay, just for today. A few hours, even. Kee probably won’t be home tonight, you can take the bed in our room and stay the night, and leave in the morning. No one— No one’s kicking you out. Stay.”

He looked crestfallen, and sad as before, but he seemed to accept my offer for the wellbeing of a friend. Because that was what I was to him –and maybe, today, something more.

* * *

 

Uncle was there when Bilbo and I came back up to the apartment, a box of possessions in each set of arms. He was reading a newspaper as well as he could, picking up on most words and filling in whatever he couldn’t understand. But his eyes were on Bilbo when we entered. I set the box down outside the bedroom door, and Bilbo followed suit –Thorin still watching him.

“Bilbo.”

The shorter man’s attention turned to the other on the sofa. “Yes?” he answered politely.

“What do you know of our courtship customs?” He sounded like he had practiced the words; I hadn’t heard such English from him before.

Bilbo swallowed. “Well, nothing, I suppose. Do you believe it’s any different from how we conduct things here?”

I should’ve warned him, but I kept my tongue, wanting to see where this was going. I listened intently, cautiously.

“We believe in what you may call singular companionship.” Definitely rehearsed, to what ends I was yet to find out. “And it is not customary to give much time to courtship before a union is determined. If we feel a connection to another, and the connection is returned, there is no sense in wasting any time.”

Oh no.

“I… don’t catch your meaning.”

“Bilbo—”

‘Fili, you ought to leave us be.’ And he said it with such intensity I almost left. But I couldn’t; there was too much at stake.

‘He doesn’t understand. He’s not gonna go along with this.’

Bilbo just watched us in petrified confusion.

‘I intend to marry, and if not of our own people, perhaps an outsider who was so willing ad eager to become one of us. Is that no longer the case?’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> QUESTION TIME!
> 
> With so much uncovered in this chapter, where do you think the story is going from here?


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for accidental misgendering.

"Bilbo..."

'Uncle, don't! Don't make this worse.'

But he didn't listen; I don't know what I expected. I wanted to cover my ears to block out what was coming next, but my fists remained clenched tight at my sides. I looked dizzily between each other man in the room, shaking, sweating.

He's gonna ruin it. He's gonna ruin everything! 

All I could do was stand by as the scene followed through, well-rehearsed proposition tumbling from Uncle's proud, awkward mouth.

"Will you marry me?"

There was silence from all of us. Thorin waited with stony patience for an answer. Bilbo's mouth was slightly agape, and I was dripping tension. He would leave now; leave and never come back. There was no doubt about that--

"Yes."

I stared at him. His face was blank, but there was a sort of peace in Bilbo's eyes, a peace that might've brought me relief if not for what he had just said. I was expecting from him shock, fear, anger, but not this. Nothing could've prepared me for that answer.

I looked to Thorin, and was livid to find a pleased smile came to his lips. I wanted to wipe it away, maybe with my fist, but elder piety was heavily ingrained in me, and my fist didn't come into glorious contact with his furry jaw. I rounded back on Bilbo. "What do you mean, yes?"

Bilbo was gentle in his response, as if anything could justify his decision, and as if his rationale could calm my angry heart. 

"I never really intended to get married," he whispered to me. Thorin wouldn't hear: he had sat back down and callously returned to his reading. "Even when I was young, it was never really something I wanted; and at my age, I don't think I'd find anyone I'd truly love enough to commit to." He sighed heavily; "No, I don't love your uncle." He was especially quiet now. "But sometimes love can come after marriage. I could come to care for him deeply. I don't... I don't want to leave this place. Even with my paper nearly complete. I've been happy here; I've made true friends, friends like you."

He smiled and put a hand on my shoulder -I pushed it off.

There was something like heartache in his eyes at that, and I almost regretted the rejection. But I couldn't let him that close to me now; it hurt too much, in a way I wasn't familiar with, and couldn't identify.

I never considered myself a coward, or thought there was anything I couldn't take on, even with difficulty. But in that instance I made myself an allowance.

I ran.

I shouldered past the man in front of me and stormed out the door. Picking up speed the further I got from that accursed couple, I rushed the stairs. Tears blurring my vision and feet moving on momentum, I couldn't help knocking into Kee on the way down. To my horror, I knocked him halfway down this flight to the landing.

"Kee!" I knelt down next to him, breathing fast and afraid.

"I'm fine," he insisted a few times, sitting up and wincing a little. "Might've bruised my ass a bit. Where are you going?"

"I--..." I realized I didn't know where I was going. Anywhere. Away from here. But Kee didn't know why, not yet. "I just need to... get some air." And find somewhere to spend the night or a week or two.

Kee nodded, but there was scrutiny on his face: he wasn't tricked by my secrecy. "Okay, I'll go with you." He reached up and wiped the pad of his thumb through a tear track on my cheek. I hadn't realized any had spilled. "Just let me get my stuff--"

"No," I interrupted, too anxious to hold my tongue. "I... I don't wanna go back right now."

He nodded slowly, thoughtful. "Okay."

I remembered that he was coming home to get some things and was going back to his girlfriend's place. He didn't want to be here right now, not with all the drama going down on Sunday (and there was still no shortage of more drama upstairs). But stood first, and took my wrist to get me back to my feet.

"Let's just take a walk, then. Come on."

* * *

 

Shops were starting to open up, and I would've liked to divert myself with what they were selling, but- I checked my pockets: one dollar bill, nine nickels, three quarters, and seven pennies. That was maybe enough to buy a bagel, no butter or cream cheese. I needed to eat something.

As if reading my mind, a few blocks later, Kee turned into a small diner. Startled, I followed him in. "What are we doing here?" I asked quietly, taught to not let on that we couldn't afford a hot meal.

"We're getting breakfast." Kee's head was held a little higher as he sat down at an empty booth. I sat tentatively across from him -as if just taking a seat would cost all of my $2.27. Kee signalled a waitress over.

"Can we get started with two cups of coffee, cream and sugar?"

"No sugar for me," I quietly corrected, arms crossed against my chest.

The waitress clucked her tongue and pointed out the opposite end of the table with her pen. "There's the sugar. Use it if you want. I'll be back with your coffees."

Kee frowned a little as she walked away, and looked at the bowl of sugar packets as if they wouldn't be there. "What kind of place doesn't do that shit for you?" he grumbled, cheeks and ears burning red. "I'm going back to McCafe, thanks." 

I wanted to smile a little at that, but my exhaustion and everything else was catching up with me.

"Now what's wrong?"

I looked back up to meet his eyes. "Nothing," I answered, not the least convincing.

"No, really." He leaned over the table a little. "Fee, you were crying back there. Tell me what happened. Whose ass do I gotta kick?"

I didn't want to talk about it, but Kee was gonna find out about it anyway. I didn't want to turn him against Thorin, no matter how much I'd like to have my little brother on my side with this. Yeah, I'd really like to have him on my side. Kee could probably talk to them and make Thorin and Bilbo realize just how ridiculous this was.

"Thorin asked Bilbo to marry him, and Bilbo said yes."

Kee laughed shortly, as if I was joking. But even when he realized I wasn't, the look in his eyes didn't fade. "Young love," he teased, laughing again as the waitress returned with their coffees.

"It's not funny, Kee!"

"It's kinda funny." He looked at the menu and, before the woman could leave he ordered flapjack platters for the both of us. I couldn't remember the last time I had flapjacks. "Plus, you like Bilbo. I'd think you'd want him to stick around, and he'll definitely be staying if they get married. What's the problem?"

"I... It's way too soon. They don't love each other. Hell, they barely know each other!"

"So? It's their lives."

Well, I wasn't getting him, then. I just sunk into my seat and resigned to moping for a while.

We ate, and I tried to enjoy the hot food. It was sweet and sticky and a treat I wished I could indulge in more often. The sugar eased my nerves a little bit. "I... I don't wanna see them get married. I don't know why."

Kee didn't answer. He might not have had a response, or his mouth was full of fluffy pancake.

When we finished, and the waitress came with the check, Kee reached into his wallet and pulled out something unfamiliar. Where had Kee gotten a credit card?

When the woman left again, I had no choice but to question his funds. "Kee, where the hell did you get that?" I hissed, hoping no one else would hear.

He smirked and took another sip of his coffee. "It's Tau's; I'm borrowing it while Woods is away. She wants to make sure I'm eating a bit more, and not skipping meals because I can't afford to eat on the go."

I nodded, but I didn't really like the sound of this.

The waitress returned with a forced smile, setting the card and check back on the table to be signed. "Thank you, ma'am." And she walked away.

I looked at Kee, almost afraidly to see directly into the fire in his eyes. He stared at the check, at the request for a gratuity fee. And he slashed down a big fat zero.

"Kee..."

"No, this was horrible service. She was rude to us, and she didn't even try to be friendly, and-... and..." He wasn't gonna say it, his own eyes now welling with angry tears. I reached out and put my hand on his arm.

"Give the minimum, fifteen percent. Or a little less than that, but you need to give something. Come on... she didn't mean it."

"Oh yeah, cuz it really fucking matters if she meant it."

"Kee, come on..."

He was incredibly tense, fist so tight around the pen that his knuckles were turning white. "Come on, let's go home."

"No. I need to return this to Tauriel." He slammed the check folio shut and stuffed the card into his pocket.

Oh.

"Kee, come here." I grabbed his arm and tugged him back down into the booth. "Kee, Tau's name is on the card, isn't it?"

He went to protest, but quickly understood. His anger turned to fervent annoyance. "I still need to make her know she was wrong."

"Then do. Ignorance doesn't excuse it, but... just keep calm. Okay? You're okay..."

He glared briefly at me, frustration and sadness swimming in his eyes. He stood back up, and moved to where the waitress stood up by the cash register.

"Ma'am, I think you were mistaken. See, you called me 'ma'am,' which is flat out wrong."

Even from back there I could see the remorse in her eyes at that. "I'm sorry. It was a... mistake. I'm really sorry."

Kee nodded and started out of the cafe. I followed him out, and we headed in the direction of the redhead's penthouse.


End file.
